wildcat
Syllables: wild·catUK/ˈwaɪldˌkæt//ˈwaɪ.əldˌkæt/
wildcat noun: felis silvestris, a common small Old World wild cat somewhat larger than a house cat. Also the alternative spelling of wild cat.
Noun
wildcat (plural wildcats)
- Felis silvestris, a common small Old World wild cat somewhat larger than a house cat.
- Synonyms:
- feral cat
- A bobcat (Lynx rufus) or other similar New World species of lynx.
- Any feral cat.
- A person who acts like a wildcat, (usually) a violent and easily-angered person or a sexually vigorous one.
- Anyone who's man enough to have landed a wildcat like you had to be quite a guy.2002 September 26, The Young and the Restless
- Synonyms:
- desert cat
- An offensive formation with an unbalanced line and a snap directly to the running back rather than the quarterback.
- A wheel that can be adjusted so as to revolve either with or on the shaft of a capstan.
Adjective
wildcat (not comparable)
- Of or concerning businesses operating outside standard or legitimate practice, especially
- Then the development of the home country was neglected for some wildcat idea of bringing up the backward people of other lands.1946, Sigurd Jay Simonsen, The Mongrels
- […] the Tank being a small arena theatre located out between a traffic analysis firm and a wildcat transistor outfit that hadn't been there last year and wouldn't be this coming but meanwhile was underselling even the Japanese and hauling in loot by the steamshovelful.1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 44
- Of or concerning irresponsible banks or banking, (particularly) small, independent operations.
- Of or concerning oil exploration in new areas, (particularly) small, independent operations.
- Of or concerning actions undertaken by workers without approval or in defiance of the formal leadership of their trade unions.
- Of or concerning customized or hand-made cartridges.
- Unauthorized by the proper authorities.
- Jewish settlers have also been active putting up five new wildcat outposts on hilltops in the West Bank to try to thwart their Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.2003 June 15, CNN
Verb
wildcat (third-person singular simple present wildcats, present participle wildcatting, simple past and past participle wildcatted)
- To drill for oil in an area where no oil has been found before.
- You'd have to be very rich or very desperate to go wildcatting that far east.
- His pitch was that fracking had transformed the production of gas from a hit-or-miss proposition to one that operated with an on and off switch. It was manufacturing, not wildcatting.2018 August 30, Bethany McLean, “How America's ‘most reckless’ billionaire created the fracking boom”, in The Guardian
Also used as
wildcat is also the alternative spelling of wild cat.
wildcat is also the clipping of wildcat cartridge.
wildcat is also the clipping of wildcat strike.
wildcat is also the clipping of wildcat money.
wildcat meaning in Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Assamese
wildcat in Telugu
- వైల్డ్క్యాట్
wildcat in Kannada
- ವೈಲ್ಡ್ಕ್ಯಾಟ್
wildcat in Gujarati
- વાઇલ્ડકેટ
wildcat in Assamese
- Felis silvestris
- হেপা hepa, হাপা hapa
More languagesFewer languages
- wildcat in Nepali
- वाइल्डक्याटलाई
- wildcat in Arabic
- ضَيْوَن ḍaywan
- wildcat in Persian
- گربهی وحشی gorbe-ye-vahši, گربه بیابانی gorbe-ye biyâbâni
Examples of wildcat in a sentence
- The rifle was originally chambered for 9mm, but had since been modified for a larger, wildcat caliber.
- Having lost our weapons, we made very easy prey for the wildcats.
- The Cyprus cat is similar to the domestic cat's ancestor, the African wildcat, Felis silvestris lybica.
Synonyms of wildcat
Forms of wildcat
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | wildcats |
| alternative form | wild-cat |
| alternative form | wild cat |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | wildcats |
| present participle | wildcatting |
| past participle | wildcatted |
| past | wildcatted |
Origin of wildcat
From Middle English wyld cat, wylde cat (in the plural as wild cattes, wylde catis, wyle cattes), equivalent to wild + cat. Cognate with Middle Low German wiltkatte, German Wildkatze, Swedish vildkatt. Its adjectival senses were originally American and derived from the "wildcat banks" of Michigan, following its elevation to statehood in 1837. Two laws—one easing the requirements for establishing a new bank and another occasioned by the Panic of 1837 that removed the need for payment in specie—led to the creation and collapse of around 50 banks within two years. The term is apocryphally derived from a wildcat supposedly featured on the currency printed by one of these banks, but more probably derived from the remote locations "where the wildcats roamed" chosen by these banks to avoid oversight and minimize redemption of notes.
Words formed from wildcat
- wildcatter
- wilkies
- Abyssinian wildcat
- African wildcat
- Arabian wildcat
- Asian steppe wildcat
- Asiatic wildcat
- Balearic wildcat
- bay wildcat
- bush wildcat
- Caucasian wildcat
- Corsica wildcat
- Cretan wildcat
- East African wildcat
- European wildcat
- forest wildcat
- Hausa wildcat
- Highland wildcat
- Iraqi wildcat
- Kalahari wildcat
- Martelli's wildcat
- Mid-belt wildcat
- Mongolian wildcat
- Near Eastern wildcat
- Rhodesian wildcat
- Scottish wildcat
- Southern African wildcat
- Syrian wildcat
- Tristram's wildcat
- Turkestan wildcat
- Ugandan wildcat
- wildcat sandwich
- wildcat well
- semiwildcat
- wildcat bank
- wildcat banking
- wildcat currency
- wildcat money
- wildcat note
- wildcat strike
Phrases with wildcat
Questions about wildcat
- What does wildcat mean?
- Wildcat means felis silvestris, a common small Old World wild cat somewhat larger than a house cat.
- What is wildcat in Telugu?
- Wildcat in Telugu is వైల్డ్క్యాట్. See Wildcat meaning in Telugu.
- What part of speech is wildcat?
- Wildcat can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
- How do you pronounce wildcat?
- Wildcat is pronounced /ˈwaɪldˌkæt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of wildcat?
- The plural of wildcat is wildcats.
Words near wildcat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wildcat (page history and authors); wildcat (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wildcat (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wildcat (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); wildcat (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-wildcat.ogg.
Cite this entry: “wildcat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wildcat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.