英语词汇cat-s-paw的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

cat’s-paw. A cat’s-paw is light air during a calm that moves as silently as a cat and causes ripples on the water, indicating a coming storm. The term is recorded as early as 1769. Captain Frederick Marryat wrote in Jacob Faithful (1834): “Cat’s paws of wind, as they call them, flew across the water here and there, ruffling its smooth surface.” In the old folktale a monkey tricks a cat into using its paw to pull chestnuts from a fire, the mon- key getting the nuts and the cat getting a burnt paw. From the tale comes our expression cat’s-paw, for “a dupe.”

词汇	cat-s-paw
词源	cat’s-paw. A cat’s-paw is light air during a calm that moves as silently as a cat and causes ripples on the water, indicating a coming storm. The term is recorded as early as 1769. Captain Frederick Marryat wrote in Jacob Faithful (1834): “Cat’s paws of wind, as they call them, flew across the water here and there, ruffling its smooth surface.” In the old folktale a monkey tricks a cat into using its paw to pull chestnuts from a fire, the mon- key getting the nuts and the cat getting a burnt paw. From the tale comes our expression cat’s-paw, for “a dupe.”
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