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Catty vs Matty - What's the difference?

catty | matty |

As adjectives the difference between catty and matty

is that catty is (informal|of a person or remark) with subtle hostility in an effort to hurt, annoy or upset, particularly among women while matty is matted.

As a noun catty

is a (unit of) weight used in china, generally standardized as half a kilogram.

catty

English

Alternative forms

* cattie

Etymology 1

; in sense “hostility”, see (m).

Adjective

(er)
  • (informal, of a person or remark) With subtle hostility in an effort to hurt, annoy or upset, particularly among women.
  • (informal) Resembling or characteristic of a cat.
  • a catty smell
    Synonyms
    * (spiteful) bitchy (derogatory), cattish, malicious, nasty, snide, spiteful
    See also
    *

    Etymology 2

    From (etyl) kati, from (etyl) languages, Mandarin:

    Noun

    (head)
  • A (unit of) weight used in China, generally standardized as half a kilogram.
  • * 2009 , Huaiyin Li, Village China Under Socialism and Reform: A Micro-History, 1948-2008 , Stanford University Press, ISBN 978-0-8047-5974-8, page 94:
  • To limit team members' consumption, it issued food stamps to the villagers and allowed everyone to eat one catty of rice a day.
  • * 1699 , Captain William Dampier, A new voyage round the world, Volume 1 :
  • 16 Mess'', make a ''Tale'', which here is 20 ''s''. ''English'', 5 ''Tale'' make a ''Bancal'', a weight so called, and 20 ''Bancal'' make a ''Catty , another weight.
  • * 1847 , Robert Montgomery Martin, China; Political, Commercial, and Social , Volume 2, James Madden (publisher), page 124:
  • Transparent yellow pieces are the best; the price is from eight to fourteen dollars per catty , according to size and quality.
    See also
    * (Hong Kong units) chek , tsun , fan , picul , tael , mace , candareen , tsin , leung , kan , tam English terms with multiple etymologies

    matty

    English

    Proper noun

    (en proper noun)
  • .
  • or Martha . Spelling variant: Mattie.
  • * 1990 , Gallowglass , Curley Pub(1991), ISBN 0792705629, page 24:
  • Tilly's name is Matilda. It was typical of Mum and Dad that they wouldn't let her be called Tilly when she came to them because that was the unusual'' shortening of Matilda, the unconventional one, and you never did unconventional things, you never did things to draw attention to yourself. So they called her Matty'''. Of course, they hardly ever called her anything, but when they had to, it was ' Matty .