tear a cat
tear a cat verb: to overact; to violently rant and rave on stage.
Verb
tear a cat (third-person singular simple present tears a cat, present participle tearing a cat, simple past tore a cat, past participle torn a cat)
- To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage.
- Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play / Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 2
- Sirha is this you would rend and teare the Cat / Upon a Stage, and now march like drown'd rat?c. 1599, John Marston, Histriomastix, act 5, scene 1, page [53]
- Synonyms:
- chew the scenery, ham, ham it up, melodramatize, overact
Synonyms of tear a cat
Forms of tear a cat
| third-person singular present | tears a cat |
|---|---|
| present participle | tearing a cat |
| past | tore a cat |
| past participle | torn a cat |
Questions about tear a cat
- What does tear a cat mean?
- Tear a cat means to overact; to violently rant and rave on stage.
- What part of speech is tear a cat?
- Tear a cat is a verb.
- What is the past tense of tear a cat?
- The past tense of tear a cat is tore a cat.
Words near tear a cat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tear a cat (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “tear a cat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tear_a_cat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.