Tabby
adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A kind of waved silk, usually called watered silk, manufactured like taffeta, but thicker and stronger. The watering is given to it by calendering. countable, uncountable
""Ay, ay; she wore a flowered silk tabby sacque, on band days," said Toole, who had an eye and a corner in his memory for female costume, "a fine showy—I remember.""
- 2 female cat wordnet
- 3 A concrete mixture of lime with shells, gravel, or stones, in equal proportions, with an equal proportion of water. When dry, this becomes as hard as rock. uncountable
- 4 a cat with a grey or tawny coat mottled with black wordnet
- 5 A brindled cat. countable
"A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her."
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- 6 A woman, irrespective of age, but often used for a young, attractive woman. Australia, countable, slang, uncountable
"‘The kids go for a drive in a borrowed car, park on another street between the corner lamps, and then there’s ructions because some little tabby gets up the stick.’"
- 7 An old maid or gossip. archaic, countable
- 1 To give a wavy or watered appearance to (a textile). transitive
- 1 Having a wavy or watered appearance.
"a tabby waistcoat"
- 2 Brindled; diversified in color.
"a tabby cat"
- 1 having a grey or brown streak or a pattern or a patchy coloring; used especially of the patterned fur of cats wordnet
- 1 A diminutive of the female given name Tabitha.
- 2 A diminutive of the female given name Tabetha.
Example
More examples"Fireball, an orange tabby cat, loves to terrorize all the cats in the neighborhood."
Etymology
Mid 17th century French tabis, from Arabic عَتَّابِيّ (ʕattābiyy), ultimately from Arabic الْعَتَّابِيَّة (al-ʕattābiyya), a quarter of Baghdad (named for a Prince عَتَّاب (ʕattāb)) which is associated with the manufacture of a certain type of waved silk. See also taffeta, another type of silk whose name derives from the Persian تافته (tâfta, “woven cloth”) and shares a similar etymological origin.
Diminutive + -y.
Related phrases
More for "tabby"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.