cat's cradle

(kăts)

1. A game in which a string is looped on the fingers to form an intricate pattern between a player's hands that can be successively varied or transferred to another player's hands.

2. An intricate pattern: a cat's cradle of conspiracies.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

cat's cradle

(Games, other than specified) a game played by making intricate patterns with a loop of string between the fingers

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

cat's′ cra′dle

a game in which two players alternately stretch a looped string over their fingers to produce different designs.

[1760–70]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

cat's cradle - a game played with string looped over the fingers

child's game - a game enjoyed by children

cat's cradle

noun

Something that is intricately and often bewilderingly complex:

entanglement, jungle, knot, labyrinth, maze, mesh (often used in plural), morass, skein, snarl, tangle, web.

Translations

cat’s cradle

n → Abnehmespiel nt, → Fadenspiel nt

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

cat's cradle

n (game) → ripiglino

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

"He's a bad kitten, Cousin Tabitha; he made a cat's cradle of my best bonnet last time I came to tea.

View in context

It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one-- only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle with them whenever they recovered themselves.

View in context

After the first day Sir Sagramore forgot all about the giant, and seemed to want to do nothing else except have Yseult show him how to play cat's cradle. They were married two months later, and my father sent my sister Elaine to Camelot to ask for a knight to protect us against a wild unicorn.'

View in context

Just like any city in the country, electrical wires and cables ran like cat's cradle across Angeles's airscape-not a good thing when you want people to appreciate the architecture.

Your summer getaway spots in Clark

Vonnegut's views on religion seep through his works, such as Cat's Cradle, through the religion Bokonism which is based on the belief that all religions (including Bokonism) are lies but, at the same time it is a useful religion that sometimes offers profound insights into the human condition.

Past in Perspective

Their topics include the trickster as transgressor in traditional Korean society, flesh eaters and organ thieves: locating transgression in Korean cannibalism, the cat's cradle: middle-class optics of desire in Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid, and transgressive academic all-stars and conventional teen idols: school-age South Koreans and hakpumo (school parents) navigating the system.

Transgression in Korea: Beyond Resistance and Control

His brow is a cat's cradle of creases, a web of dry riverbeds left by a life deluged with worries.

FEDERATION'S ORPHAN

The only danger was that, if too many people were wearing them on the same night, the Bigg Market might end up looking like it had hosted a world record Cat's Cradle attempt.

Socks again in our stockings at Xmas

Since the glass surface allows for the tape, or paper, or stray notepad markings to be viewed recto and verso, the blanched color of the wall here contributed to an errant sense of Cubist collage, an effect that counters the cat's cradle of the loosely geometric shapes delineated by the wire or cord.

Nahum Tevet: Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College

The clever comic numbers all work well and the interlocking ensembles form an exhilarating cat's cradle of music.

This was well worth the wait!

The end result of the dance would be either a plaited pattern of ribbons round the pole or a tangled cat's cradle.

Dancing around the Maypole