Kitty-corner? A cat (Erik) sitting in a corner by a feline water fountain
25 March 2021
Kitty-corner is a good example of folk etymology, that is the altering of unfamiliar elements of a word to ones that seem to make more sense. It comes from catercorner, and the unfamiliar cater- becomes kitty- or catty-. But the word has nothing to do with felines. Cater is a borrowing of the French quatre, meaning four, and catercornered literally means four-cornered and denotes a diagonal direction or oblique angle.
According to the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), the variant kitty-corner is common across the North, Midland, and West of the United States, while catty-corner is more likely to be found in the South and South Midland.
Catercornered appears in the sixteenth century, in a translation of a fourteenth-century medical text by Lanfranco of Milan:
And of these muscles of the belly, are .viii. as I sayde before, of the whyche there be .ii. that come downe straighte a longest the bellye, hauinge their begynninge at the sharpe gristle, or shielde of the brest, and ende at the bones aboue the priuy members called Ossa pectinis: and therfore are called Musculi recti. Then ther are other two fixed to the rydge whyche goe transuers from the sydes, crosse the bredthe of the bellye: and therfore are called Musculi transuersi, or Laterales. Then are there .iiii. that are called Musculi obliqui: of the which there are .ii. that are called Obliqui ascendentes, because they spreade as it were cater cornered vpwarde: and the other ii. are called Obliqui descendentes, because they crosse slope wise, the other .ii. cater cornered downwardes.
And we see it in another text, the 1655 Natura exenterata (Nature Laid Open), which is again primarily a medical text but which also contains commentary on other useful arts, in this case sewing:
Provided alwayes if your work go true, you have three long stitches of an even length. And so your work is made an end, for there is but three courses in al the work besides the plain course. You must take heed at the beginning of your work, that you set one Skallop shel right against another, a Dyamond right against another, and so you may make the work of the double Dyamond as you do this in every point, saving at the beginning of your work you must set your Diamond-over-thwart your work, cater corner, if it be wrought with a great pinne it is the better.
The folk etymologizing of cater- into kitty- and catty- happens in the United States during the nineteenth century. We see catty-cornered in 1838 in the writing of Joseph C. Neal, a humorist who was something of a precursor to Mark Twain in style:
Of crooked disciples, Jacob Grigsby is the crookedest. His disposition is twisted like a ram's horn, and none can tell in what direction will be the next turn. He is an independent abstraction—one of that class, who do not seem aware that any feelings are to be consulted but their own, and who take the last bit, as if unconscious that it is consecrated to that useful divinity “manners;” lads, who always run in first when the bell rings, and cannot get their boots off when any body tumbles overboard; who, when compelled to share their bed with another, lie in that engrossing posture called “catty-cornered,” and when obliged to rise early, whistle, sing and dance, that none may enjoy the slumbers denied to them;—in short, he strongly resembles that engaging species of the human kind, who think it creditable to talk loud at theatres and concerts, and to encore songs and concertos which nobody else wants to hear.
On the page of the edition I consulted, catty-cornered is split at a line break, so it is unclear whether the word would normally have a hyphen or not.
And we get kitty-cornered a decade later in a 1 June 1848 from a Prudence Nicely (probably not her real name, and possibly not a real person) to the Ladies Repository magazine in which she critiques the housekeeping skills of the minister’s wife:
My soul, what a higgly piggly mess was the “best room” that morning! The bed clothes formed a pyramid, the pillows lay all crumpled and twisted, the wash-bowl full of awful suds, great spots of varnish removed by the soap laid on the mahogany, instead of in the cup-plate, the towels rolled up as for a duster, the comb and brush full of straggling hair, (nobody wanted a lock of his hair) the white muslin curtains tucked up any way and wet by the shower that stained them, and the chairs standing kitty-cornered in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t help pitying that “brother’s” wife, and thanking my stars that such pesky carelessness does not come over to our house.
And by 1872, grammarians are criticizing the use of the “abominable” catty cornered and kitty cornered, indicating that these variants were in common enough use to be called out for correction. In that year grammar scold L. P. Meredith denigrated the use of those variants in his Every-Day Errors of Speech. Meredith was one in a long line of grammar pedants who have no formal training or expertise in language. He was, rather, a physician and dentist. His other major work was The Teeth, and How to Save Them:
Cater-cornered — kāˊter-cor-nered, not kătˊty-cor-nered. Not down, thus compounded in Webster, but his pronunciation of the separate words is as given. Worcester gives the word as above and defines it as an adjective — diagonal. It is generally used though, I believe, as an adverb; as, "the piano stands cater-cornered" (diagonally). It is regarded as an inelegant word, diagonal and diagonally being preferred: though it is probable that this opinion has been caused by the abominable pronunciations catty and kitty cornered.
Catty-cornered also developed the sense of ill-tempered, which can be found in the southern United States, the same metaphor that underlies the more standard cross, meaning angry. Lydia Wood Baldwin’s 1884 Yankee School-Teacher in Virginia has this bit dialogue ascribed to a Black man, a racist use of Black dialect to elicit laughs:
"She am de catty-corneres sort ob beast dat eber I wur ’flicted ter own, dat she am," began Uncle Ned, with a grieved expression on his wrinkled face, which provoked another round of laughter. As if seeking to interrupt the recital of her misdeeds, the mule suddenly started at full speed along the highway, jerking her master indecorously backward.
Kitty-cornered or catty-cornered shouldn’t be considered “errors” today, but they are colloquialisms, with cater-cornered preferred in formal writing.
Sources:
Baldwin, Lydia Wood. Yankee School-Teacher in Virginia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1884, 177. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dictionary of American Regional English, 2013, s.v. catercorner, adj., adv., kitty-corner, adv., adj.
Lanfranco of Milan. A Most Excellent and Learned Worke of Chirurgerie. John Halle, trans. London: Thomas Marshe, 1565, 76–77. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
“Letter from Miss Nicely” (1 June 1848). The Ladies’ Repository, vol. 17. Boston: A Tompkins, 1849, 21. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Meredith, L. P. Every-Day Errors of Speech. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1872, 14. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Natura exenterata: or Nature Unbowelled by the Most Exquisite Anatomizers of Her. London: H Twiford, 1655, 408. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Neal, Joseph C. Charcoal Sketches; or, Scenes in a Metropolis, second edition. Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1838, 196. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. cater-cornered, adv. and adj., cater, v.2, cornered, adj.
Photo credit: David Wilton, 2019.