Forms: 4–5 caterwrawe, 4–6 -wawe, 6 katerwaue, 6–8 catterwawl, -wall, 8 -wowl, 7–9 -waul, 7 -waule, caterwaule, -wawl, catterwrall, (catwrall), 8 catterwaw, 6– caterwaul. [This occurs in the various forms caterwrawe, -wawe, -wrawl(e, -wawle, -waul. The second element appears separately in the vb. wrawen used (of a cat) by Caxton, wrawlen, wraule of cats, squalling children, etc., frequent in Googe, Tusser, Holland, and others from c. 1570 to 1625 or later; waul is of doubtful occurrence before 1600. The precise relation between these is not clear; all are prob. imitative of the sound, but whether the forms in -l are formed on the others (cf. mew, mewl, Ger. miauen, miaulen, and F. miauler) is doubtful.
Forms akin to wrawe, wrawl in other langs. are Da. vraale, Sw. vråla, to roar, bellow, bawl, Norw. dial. rȃla, in the north of Norway ‘to cry as a cat,’ LG. wralen (Bremen Wbch.) said of a stallion in heat, also of an ill-behaved man, ‘to be noisy and unruly’; cf. also Bavarian rauen, rauelen ‘to howl, whine,’ said esp. of the cat, also Swiss rauen, räulen, the latter esp. of the cry of the cat when in heat. (Wr- becomes r- in HG.: an OE. *wreawlian, ME. wrawlen would answer exactly to Bav. rauelen.) The sense of the Ger. words also comes near the Eng., since both in Chaucer and in the transf. use of the 16–17th c., the word was spec. applied to the cry and behavior of the cat when ‘after kind.’ As to the -waul form, an exact LG. counterpart katterwaulen ‘(von Kindern) schreien und heulen wie streitende Katzen’ is given by Schambach, Göttingisches Grubenhagen’sches Idiotiken 1858, but its history is uncertain; cf. also Icel. vála to wail.
Cater is, of course, connected with CAT, but the form is not certainly explained: some would see in it a parallel to Du. and Ger. kater male cat, which may once have existed in OE.; but the word appears too late to prove this. Others would take -er as some kind of suffix or connective merely.]
1. intr. Of cats: To make the noise proper to them at rutting time.
Prof. Skeat explains Caterw(r)awet, in Chaucer, as a verbal sb., on the type of OE. on huntað, a-hunting.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Wife’s Prol. (Harl.), 354. If the cattes skyn be slyk and gay, forth she wil, er eny day be dawet, To schewe hir skyn, and goon a caterwrawet [so Corpus: 5 texts have -wawed].
[1481. Caxton, Reynard, x. (Arb.), 22. Thenne began he [Tybert the Cat] to wrawen … and made a shrewde noyse.]
1530. [see CATERWAULING].
[1596. Spenser, F. Q., VI. xii. 47. Cats, that wrawling still do cry.]
1610. Chester’s Tri., Envy & L., 51. Oh it grates my gall To hear an apish kitling catterwall.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Garret’s Ghost, Wks. II. 177/1. Dead midnight came, the Cats ’gan catterwaule.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, II. viii. A noise, not unlike … in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling.
1876. Smiles, Sc. Natur., vi. (ed. 4), 100. Two cats … caterwauling in the grave-yard.
2. transf. To utter a similar cry; to make a discordant, hideous noise; to quarrel like cats.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., I. ii. III. x. (1676), 66/2. They will let them [children] caterwaule, sterue, begge and hang.
1651. Cleveland, Smectym., 87. Thus might Religions Catterwaul and spight Which uses to Divorce, might once unite.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), II. 311. Those, that are concerned in one another’s Love and Honour, are never quiet, but always catterwalling.
1721. Mrs. Delany, Autobiog. (1861), I. 276. They agreed to sing a duetto … such catterwauling was never heard and we all laughed.
3. To be in heat; to be lecherous; to behave amorously or lasciviously; to woo (contemptuous).
1599. Nashe, Lenten Stuffe (1871), 89. The friars and monks caterwauled, from the abbots and priors to the novices.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., III. ii. I. i. (1651), 445. She catterwauls, and must have a stallion, a Champion, she must and will marry again.
1713. Rowe, Jane Shore, Prol. 1. They caterwaul’d in no Romantick Ditty, Sighing for Phillis’s, or Chloe’s Pity.
1730. Fielding, Author’s Farce, Wks. 1775, I. 206. So, so, very fine: always together, always caterwauling.
1870. [see CATERWAULING vbl. sb. 2].
