wildcatter
/ˈwaɪldˌkætə(ɹ)/
wildcatter noun: someone who drills for oil speculatively.
Noun
wildcatter (plural wildcatters)
- Someone who drills for oil speculatively.
- One of America's most successful “wildcatters” is poised to explore for oil in Venezuela after agreeing a draft deal with the country's authorities and buying seismic data to gain a head start on rivals.2026 July 18, Jamie Smyth, “‘Wildcatter’ who cracked Alaska sets sight on Venezuela”, in FT Weekend (Companies & Markets section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 11
- A worker who participates in a wildcat strike.
- A person who makes wildcat cartridges and the guns that use them.
- Roy Weatherby began his career in the firearms industry as a “wildcatter”, developing his revolutionary ideas about rifle cartridge performance and design.a. 2005, “Ammunition”, in Weatherby, archived from the original on 15 Feb 2005
Forms of wildcatter
| plural | wildcatters |
|---|
Origin of wildcatter
From wildcat + -er.
Questions about wildcatter
- What does wildcatter mean?
- Wildcatter means someone who drills for oil speculatively.
- What part of speech is wildcatter?
- Wildcatter is a noun.
- How do you pronounce wildcatter?
- Wildcatter is pronounced /ˈwaɪldˌkætə(ɹ)/.
- What is the plural of wildcatter?
- The plural of wildcatter is wildcatters.
Words near wildcatter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wildcatter (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-wildcatter.oga.
Cite this entry: “wildcatter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wildcatter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.