catling

See also: Catling

English

Etymology

From cat +‎ -ling. Compare kitling, catkin. According to the OED, the sense of a surgical knife may be an independent word.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkætlɪŋ/

Noun

catling (plural catlings)

1. (archaic) A little cat; a kitten.
   • a. 1649, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Phillis:

     For never cat nor catling I shall find, / But mew shall they in Pluto's palace blind.

2. catgut; a catgut string
   • c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v]:

     "..what say you, Simon Catling?

3. (surgery) A double-edged, sharp-pointed dismembering knife.
   • 1852, Joseph Pancoast, A Treatise on Operative Surgery:

     The operator […] grasping the soft parts immediately below, raises them so as to facilitate the passage of a double-edged knife or catling across the face of the bones […]

   • 1878, Maryland Medical Journal: Medicine and Surgery‎^[1], volume 4, page 284:

     […] after Esmarch we hold back the bloody torrent which once gushed forth after the catling; and Listerizing with Lister's spray we bar all passage into gaping wounds of motes that people the sunbeam and breed havoc in the tract of the sanguineous life stream.

Synonyms

• (knife): catlin

Related terms

• kitling

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “catling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• talcing