catty, noun

Forms:
caddie, cattieShow more Also caddie, cattie, kattie, katty, kettie.
Origin:
English, AfrikaansShow more Formed on English catapult + (informal) noun-forming suffix -y (or -ie). The k- spelling-forms are influenced by Afrikaans.
colloquial
Especially in the language of children: a catapult. Also attributive.
1970 J. Taylor Informant, Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe)Caddie. A catapult. When a schoolgirl..was asked in a quiz show..how David killed Goliath her reply was: ‘Oh with a caddie.’
1970 Y. Holloway Informant, Durban, KwaZulu-NatalI’m going to take my kettie and see if I can hit that tree over there.
1970 B.C. Maritz Informant, Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha), Eastern CapeUse your fly-kattie for shooting orange peels with.
1973 Brink & Hewitt ad. Aristophanes’s The Birds. 11You’re threatened, laughed at, hunted, trapped. Children throw stones at you and shoot at you with catties.
1977 E. Prov. Herald 30 Apr. 1For a few cents you can arm yourself with a modern and highly sophisticated ‘catty’ (not just a twig-fork plucked at random from a tree and a strip of inner tube; these are made of plastic) and load up with lead shot.
1981 Daily Dispatch 18 Feb. 8Modern, factory-produced catapults with metal frames..are mere assembly line trash, upstarts..compared to the classic ‘blougom en tjoob’ of the pukka kettie.
1986 Crux Aug. 43When Goliath spots this little ou, he only mocks him and tunes him, ‘Sonny, get lost!’ But David..pulls out his slingshot (a catty-like boulder-holder), grafts one stone in and aims at Goliath.
1987 S. Gouvelis in Eng. Alive 35Our field-gun, an oversized catty, is cached away in the ‘fort’.
1991 A.C. Eidelman Informant, Johannesburg, GautengKatty. A sling, homemade from the y-shaped branch of a tree — with 2 pieces of rubber and a centre-piece of leather or what have you.
1992 C.M. Knox tr. of E. Van Heerden’s Mad Dog 138‘Have a go with my cattie, Josh,’ Knackers offered. ‘I cut a new piece of car-tube for it on Saturday.’ We chatted all the way to school,..taking pot-shots at the dogs with the cattie.
a catapult. Also attributive.
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colloquial
cattle-killing, nounn.CBD, nounn.
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