Forms: 4 kitoun, ketoun, 4–5 kyton, 5 kytton, 7– kitten. [ME. app. a. AFr. *kitoun, *ketun = OF. chitoun, cheton, obs. var. of F. chaton kitten.
The F. form chitoun occurs in Gower Mirour de l’omme 8221: Teut ensement comme du chitoun, Qi naist sanz vieue et sanz resoun.]
1. The young of the cat; a young cat (not full-grown).
1377. Langl., P. Pl., B. Prol. 190. Þere þe catte is a kitoun þe courte is ful elyng.
c. 1400. Master of Game, ix. (MS. Digby 182). Þei beer hir kitouns … as oþer cattes, saue þei haue not but two ketouns at ones.
c. 1450. Merlin, 665. He caste his net into the water, and drough oute a littil kyton as blakke as eny cool.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., III. i. 129. I had rather be a Kitten, and cry mew, Then one of these same Meeter Ballad-mongers.
1776. Whitehead, Variety, 9. The Kitten too was comical, She play’d so oddly with her tail.
1852. Miss Mulock, Agatha’s Husb., i. Carrying not only the real black kitten, but the … allegorical ‘little black dog’ on her shoulder.
b. transf. Applied to the young of some other animals.
1495. Trevisa’s Barth. De P. R., XVIII. lxxiv. (W. de W.), 829. The wesell … nouryssheth her kyttons [MS. Bodl. (c. 1450) ketelinges] in howses and bereth them fro place to place.
1899. Blackw. Mag., Jan., 41/1. Each beaver-plew of full-grown animal or ‘kitten’ fetched six to eight dollars overhead.
c. fig. Applied to a young girl, with implication of playfulness or skittishness.
1894. H. Nisbet, Bush Girl’s Rom., 74. After fishing all she could, artful, artless little kitten that she is.
2. Short for kitten-moth: see 3.
1874. Newman, Brit. Moths, 210. The Alder Kitten.
3. attrib. and Comb., as kitten days, face; kitten-like adj.; kitten-hearted a., faint-hearted, timorous; kitten-moth, a collector’s name for the bombycid moth Cerura furcula; also for species of Dicranura, as D. bifida (poplar-kitten), D. bicuspis (alder-kitten).
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., I. 166. The gamesome plays That mark’d her happy *Kitten-days.
1813. Sketches Character (ed. 2), I. 157. I see her *kitten face looking about, trying to understand what’s going forwards.
1831. T. Attwood, 19 Sept., in Life, xi. (1885), 171. The tame *kitten-hearted slaves.
1838. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xxxiv. Pouncing with *kitten-like playfulness upon a stray sovereign.
1819. G. Samouelle, Entomol. Compend., 248. Cer[ura] Vinulia (puss moth)…. Cer[ura] Furcula (*kitten moth).
Hence Kittendom, Kittenhood, the state or condition of being a kitten.
1867. N. Y. Times, May 19, 8/4. The truthfulness with which he [the taxidermist] has introduced the weaknesses of human nature into kittendom.
1886. Besant, Childr. Gibeon, II. xxii. A man whom they [the cats] had known and respected since kittendom.
a. 1843. Southey, Nondescripts, i. 50. Thou art beautiful as ever cat That wanton’d in the joy of kittenhood.
