[f. TIP v.2 + CAT sb.1]
1. A short piece of wood tapering at both ends, used in the game described in 2: = CAT sb.1 10 a.
1676. Grew, Disc. Salts Plants, ii. 86. The Crystals … were about the bigness of a Rice-Corn. In Figure almost like a Tip-Cat, which Boys play with.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, III. xvi. (Roxb.), 82/1. Striker or cat stick and rip cat.
1798. Sporting Mag., XII. 194. [He] nearly got his eye knocked out by a boy’s tip cat.
1853. Times, 12 April. Persons whose eyes have been hopelessly destroyed by blows from tip-cats.
2. A game in which the wooden cat or tip-cat (see 1) is struck or ‘tipped’ at one end with a stick so as to spring up, and then knocked to a distance by the same player: CAT sb.1 10 b.
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., II. ii. § 22. Tip-cat, or perhaps more properly the game of cat, is a rustic pastime well known in many parts of the kingdom.
1854. Macaulay, Biog., Bunyan (1860), 30. The … chief sins … were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat.
1876. World, VI. No. 106. 11. The game of tip-cat is also … in full swing.
1907. Sat. Rev., 30 March, 390/1. Playing tip-cat … requires a good deal of neatness and quickness to tip the cat smartly.
