Pièce 14 - Postcard from W. W. Skeat to W. Aldis Wright

(Cambridge.)—Discusses the meaning of the phrase ‘cat in the pan’.

(Undated. Postmarked at Cambridge on 7 Dec. 1899.)

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Transcript

My reasons for supposing that, in ‘cat in the pan’ {1}, the cat means a pussy, are: (1) that the word cate does not seem ever to have been spelt without a final e; & (2) that cate does not appear in the singular number earlier than the time of Shakespeare; in all older quotations it is cates in the plural.

Yrs
W W Skeat

[Direction:] W. Aldis Wright Esq. | Trinity College [At the foot:] Local.

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Postmarked at Cambridge on 7 December 1899.

{1} The phrase occurs in Bacon’s essay ‘Of Cunning’.