or cat, subs. (common).—A nine-lashed scourge now used for the punishment of criminals, but until 1881 the authorised means of punishment in the British army and navy. [From CAT, a beast with claws, + O’ + NINE TAILS, the nine knotted lashes. History is against the view of some military authorities that the CAT-O’-NINE-TAILS was a Batavian importation of William III., and that the word ‘cat’ is derived from the Sclavonic kat, an executioner, or from katowae, to lash or torture. Another theory is that it was introduced at the time of the Armada (1588), when vast numbers of these ‘straunge whips’ were found in the captured ships of the Spaniards. A ballad of the period declares of the Spaniards that—

        They made such whippes wherewith no man would seeme to strike a dogge;
So strengthened eke with brasen tagges and filde so roughe and thinne,
That they would force at every lash the bloud abroad to spinne.
This view is not inconsistent with the quotations, the first of which antedates the earliest given in the N.E.D. by thirty years.] In prison parlance the CAT-O’-NINE-TAILS is known as NUMBER ONE or the NINE-TAILED BRUISER (q.v.), the birch as NUMBER TWO (q.v.).

1

  1665.  R. HEAD, The English Rogue, pt. I., ch. iii., p. 28 (1874). A CAT OF NINE-TAILS (as he called it) being so many small cords.

2

  1702.  VANBRUGH, The False Friend, Prologue.

        You dread reformers of an impious age,
You awful CATTA-NINE-TAILES to the stage.

3

  1748.  SMOLLETT, Roderick Random, ch. v. ‘I’ll bring him to the gangway, and anoint him with a CAT-AND-NINE-TAILS.’

4

  1837.  CARLYLE, The French Revolution, pt. III., bk. VII., ch. iii. Rash coalised kings, such a fire have ye kindled; yourselves fireless, your fighters animated only by drill-sergeants, mess-room moralities, and the drummer’s CAT.

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