英语词汇cat and mouse的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

cat and mouse. Surprisingly enough, suffragettes arrested in England in about 1913 inspired the first popular use of this ex- pression. The suffragettes often went on hunger strikes when imprisoned, and the government retaliated by passing the “Prisoners’ Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act,” which said that prisoners could be set free while fasting but were liable for rearrest when they recovered from their fasts to serve the remainder of their sentences. Critics compared the govern- ment’s action to a big cat cruelly playing with a little mouse and dubbed the legislation “The Cat and Mouse Act.” From the act, which wasn’t particularly successful, came the popularization of to play cat and mouse with, though the expression may have been used long before this.

词汇	cat and mouse
词源	cat and mouse. Surprisingly enough, suffragettes arrested in England in about 1913 inspired the first popular use of this ex- pression. The suffragettes often went on hunger strikes when imprisoned, and the government retaliated by passing the “Prisoners’ Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health Act,” which said that prisoners could be set free while fasting but were liable for rearrest when they recovered from their fasts to serve the remainder of their sentences. Critics compared the govern- ment’s action to a big cat cruelly playing with a little mouse and dubbed the legislation “The Cat and Mouse Act.” From the act, which wasn’t particularly successful, came the popularization of to play cat and mouse with, though the expression may have been used long before this.
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