catkin

Etymology

It is borrowed from Dutch katteken (“kitten; catkin”),^[2][3][4] a word now obsolete in Dutch,^[5][6][7][8] which Lyte took from Dodoens's herbal when he translated it.^[2][9] It is a diminutive of katte (“cat”),^{[2][10][3][11]} from Proto-Germanic *kattuz.^[6] The OED, Barnhart and Etymonline explain the name by the flower spike's soft, downy look, like a kitten's fur;^[2][4][10] Klein, Merriam-Webster Unabridged and the American Heritage Dictionary point instead to its likeness to a cat's or kitten's tail.^[11][12][6] The same two senses, kitten and catkin, are found in 16th-century Latin catulus, French chaton and German Kätzchen.^[2][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A downy flower spike of trees such as the hazel and willow: 1578, in Lyte's translation of Dodoens's herbal.^{[2][4][12][9]} Etymonline gives the 1570s.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English as a term in a herbal and has kept that one sense.^[2][9] Before it, according to Weekley, the same things were called aglets and tags, and Cotgrave glosses French chattons as "the catkins, cattails, aglet-like blowings, or bloomings, of nut-trees".^[9] Later dictionaries only sharpen the botanical definition, as a unisexual flower spike with no petals.^[2][12][7]

Timeline

• 1578 – a downy flower spike, in Lyte's translation of Dodoens.^[2][12][4] Etymonline gives the 1570s.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. A slender, usually hanging spike of small flowers of one sex without petals, often soft and downy, borne by trees such as the willow, birch, hazel and oak; also called an ament.^{[2][12][7][5]}

Word family

• catkinate

Related words

• cat
• -kin
• catling

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster