Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Perhaps from lLat cattus ‘cat’, of unknown origin. More likely, however, the Lat and the Ar words both have the same ancestor in an older Eastern culture. Littmann1924: 14 thinks most probably this is Ancient Egypt, because of the prominent position cats had in Eg culture. (Recent archeozoological findings indeed support the thesis that Europe came to know domesticated cats through the Romans, who imported them from Egypt.) The domestication process itself, however, seems to have taken place, for the first time, somewhere in the Fertile Crescent region.¹ This would support the thesis, put forward by Rolland2014a, that the origin of the word probably has to be looked for in a Mesopotamian, Iranian, or Sem lang.
▪ Klein1966 and EtymOnline even do not exclude the possibility of an AfrAs origin (cf. Nub kadīs, Berb kadiska ‘cat’).
▪ For other terms for ‘cat’, cf. ↗hirr (ultimately onomatop.) and ↗bass (from Eg).

1. Cf. Carlos A. Discoll (et al.), “The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication,” Science, 317 (27Jul2007): 519-23.

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west

▪ Not from Ar qiṭṭ but probably from the same source are most Eur words for ‘cat’, e.g., Engl cat, oEngl catt (c. 700), from WGerm (c. 400-450), from protGerm *kattuz (cognates: oFris katte, oNor köttr, Dutch kat, oHGe kazza, Ge Katze), from lLat cattus. – The near-universal Eur word now appeared in Europe as Lat catta (Martial, c. 75), ByzGrk katta (c. 350) and was in general use on the continent by c. 700, replacing Lat feles – EtymOnline.

deriv

► qiṭṭ al-zabād, n., civet cat

► qiṭṭaẗ, n.f., female cat: f. of qiṭṭ.
► quṭayṭaẗ, n.f., kitten: dimin.

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