tabby

Most of us know that a tabby cat is either a female house cat or one with a striped or brindled coat regardless of its sex. But tabby can also refer to an elderly woman. Where does the word come from? It has a convoluted and somewhat uncertain etymology.

The English word is borrowed from a number of European languages: the French tabis, in Old French atabis; the Spanish tabi; the Portuguese tabi; and the Italian tabi. These all in turn come from the medieval Latin attabi, which was taken from the Arabic ‘attābī, which is a reference to al-’Attābīya, a neighborhood of Baghdad. This quarter of the city is named for Attab ibn Asid, the first governor of Mecca following its conquest by Muhammad. Tabby, and its ancestors in these other languages, originally referred to silk taffeta, which was woven in the Baghdad neighborhood. The cloth was originally striped but later came to be used for cloth of a single color that was waved or watered.

But the senses of tabby meaning a female cat may have a distinct origin. While it most likely also comes from the idea of streaks of color, it may come from the name Tabitha.

Tabby appears in English as early as 1638 referring to the cloth. It appears in a letter from Thomas Verney to his father requesting items he needs to establish himself in Barbados:

Now for some necessaries concerning myself. As first, for one good cloth sute, and one taby or good stuff sute.

The connection to felines is in place by 1664, when it appears as an adjective in George Etherege’s play The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub:

Laugh but one minute longer I will foreswear Thy company, kill thy Tabby Cat, and make thee weep For ever after.

The noun appears by 1774, when Oliver Goldsmith uses it in a description of civets in his History of the Earth:

This animal varies in colour, being sometimes streaked, as in our kind of cats called Tabbies.

The application of the adjective to older women appears as early as 1748 in Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa:

With horrible grave faces was I received. The two antiques only bowed their tabby heads; making longer faces than ordinary; and all the old lines appearing strong in their furrow’d foreheads and fallen cheeks.

Here tabby is referring to various shades of gray hair on the two women’s heads. But within a few years, the word was being used as a noun for elderly women. From George Colman’s 1761 play The Jealous Wife:

L[ady]. Free[love] Lud! lud! What shall I do with Them? Why do these foolish Women come troubling me now? I must wait on Them in the Dressing-Room, and You must execute the Card, Harriot, till They are gone. I’ll dispatch Them as soon as I can, but Heaven knows when I shall get rid of Them, for They are both everlasting Gossips; tho’ the Words come from her Ladyship, one by one, like Drops from a Sill, while the other tiresome Woman overwhelms Us with a Flood of Impertinence. Harriot, You’ll entertain his Lordship till I return. (Exit.

L[ord]. Trink[et]. ’Pon Honour, I am not sorry for the coming in of these old tabbies, and am much obliged to her Ladyship for leaving us such an agreeable Tête-à-Tête.

Har[riot] Your Lordship will find Me extreamly bad Company.

L. Trink. Not in the least, my Dear!

The sense of a female cat was in place by the early nineteenth century. Note that this comes quite a bit later than the application of tabby to women. Whereas the use in relation to women clearly comes from the idea of streaks of color, in this case gray hairs, the use in relation to female cats may come from the name Tabitha, in contrast to tomcat, from the name Thomas, used for male cats. We see this sense in an 1826 revision of James Townley’s play High Life Below Stairs of that year:

Lovel. Didn’t you hear a noise, Charles?

Free[man]. Somebody sneezed, I thought.

Lovel. (rises) There are thieves in the house. I’ll be among ’em. (takes a pistol)

Kitty. Lack-a-day! sir, it was only the cat. They sometimes sneeze for all the world like a Christian. Here, Jack, Jack; he has got a cold, sir; puss, puss.

Lovel. (going towards R. door) A cold, then I’ll cure him. Here, Jack, Jack; Puss, puss.

Kitty. Your honour won’t be rash. Pray, your honour, don’t. (opposing)

Lovel. Stand off! Here, Freeman; here’s a barrel for business, with a brace of slugs, and well primed as you see. Freeman, I’ll hold five to four—Nay, I’ll hold you two to one, I hit the cat through the key-hole of that pantry door.

Free. Try, try; but I think it impossible.

Lovel. I am a good marksman—a dead shot. (cocks the pistol, and points it at the pantry door) Now for it! One, two three. (a violent shriek, and the door is thrown open, all is discovered) Who the devil are all these? One, two, three, four. Why, Mrs. Kitty, your cat has kittened—two Toms and two Tabbies!

Philip. They are particular friends of mine, sir; servants to some noblemen in the neighbourhood.

The line reading “two Toms and two Tabbies” doesn’t appear in the original 1759 version of the play. In the scan of the 1763 printing in the HathiTrust Digital Library, the printed line ends with “four—”, after which someone, at some unknown date, has penciled in, “Pray Mrs. Kitty whose Cats are these?”

From the available evidence, we can’t say for certain why we call female cats tabbies. It may come from the sense of striped cats, or it may come from the name Tabitha, or perhaps both influenced the sense.

Sources:

American Heritage Dictionary, fifth edition, 2022, s.v. tabby, n. & adj.

Colman, George. The Jealous Wife. London: J. Newbery, et al., 1761, 2.3, 38. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Etherege, George. The Comical Revenge, or, Love in a Tub. London: Henry Herringman, 1664, 4.7, 65. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).

Goldsmith, Oliver. An History of the Earth, and Animated Nature, vol. 3. London: J. Nourse, 1774, 3.390. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, 1910, s.v. tabby, n. & adj.

Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa. London: John Osborn, et al., 1748, 6.98. Gale Primary Sources: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Townley, James. High Life Below Stairs, revised edition. London: Thoms Hailes Lacy, 2.1, 30. HathiTrust Digital Library. 1763 edition, HathiTrust Digital Library.

Verney, Thomas. Letter, 20 May 1638. In John Bruce, ed. Letters and Papers of The Verney Family. London: John Bowyer Nichols and Sons, 1853, 197. Archive.org.

Photo credit: Shadow460, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.