Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A fourth cousin; a remote relation; hence, a friend.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A remote relation. See
quater-cousin .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Distant relative, especially a very distant relative, of doubtful relation.
- noun A close or good friend. An intimate. A
bosom friend . An intimate friend who is not ablood relation . A person treated as acousin (relative) who is not ablood relation
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
cater- + cousin, where cater- is of disputed origin. Liberman argues that this is a prefix meaning “crooked, angled, clumsy” – here meaning “distant, doubtful, deficient”, of North Germanic origin; compare cater-corner. The sense “distant relation, doubtful relation” appears to be older than “intimate friend”; in 19th century Lancashire dialect, the sense is specifically “very distant and doubtful relation”.
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Examples
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I have _fubb'd_ this young _quat_ -- _Quat_, or cat, appears to be a contraction of cater-cousin -- and this reading will be greatly strengthened when it is remembered that Roderigo was really the intimate of Iago. -- p. 204.
Famous Reviews R. Brimley Johnson 1899
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St. James's, no cater-cousin of the Groom-Porter he.
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave among the moors... George Augustus Sala 1861
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