wildcat

plural wildcats · alternative wild-cat · alternative wild cat

1. A cat that lives in the wilderness, specifically:
   1. UKFelis silvestris, a common small Old World wild cat somewhat larger than a house cat.

      Synonyms: feral cat

   2. USA bobcat (Lynx rufus) or other similar New World species of lynx.
   3. Any feral cat.
   4. alternativeuncommonAlternative spelling of wild cat, any undomesticated felid, as tigers or lions.

      2003 April 24, CNN Upon checking it out, we found a total of 13 newborn wildcats: nine newborn tigers and two newborn leopards.

2. figurativelyA person who acts like a wildcat, (usually) a violent and easily-angered person or a sexually vigorous one.

   2002 September 26, The Young and the Restless Anyone who's man enough to have landed a wildcat like you had to be quite a guy.

   Synonyms: desert cat

3. American footballAn offensive formation with an unbalanced line and a snap directly to the running back rather than the quarterback.
4. nauticalA wheel that can be adjusted so as to revolve either with or on the shaft of a capstan.
5. abbreviationclippingengineeringClipping of wildcat cartridge.
6. abbreviationclippinguncommonClipping of wildcat strike (“a strike undertaken without authorization from the relevant trade union”).
7. abbreviationclippingobsoleteClipping of wildcat money (“notes issued by a wildcat bank”).

alternative wild-cat · alternative wild cat

1. derogatorynot comparableusuallyOf or concerning businesses operating outside standard or legitimate practice, especially

   Then the development of the home country was neglected for some wildcat idea of bringing up the backward people of other lands.

   1946, Sigurd Jay Simonsen, The Mongrels

   1 more example

   […] the Tank being a small arena theatre located out between a traffic analysis firm and a wildcat transistor outfit that hadn't been there last year and wouldn't be this coming but meanwhile was underselling even the Japanese and hauling in loot by the steamshovelful.

   1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 44

2. Of or concerning businesses operating outside standard or legitimate practice, especially:
   1. datedderogatorynot comparableusuallyOf or concerning irresponsible banks or banking, (particularly) small, independent operations.
   2. derogatorynot comparableusuallyoil industryOf or concerning oil exploration in new areas, (particularly) small, independent operations.
   3. derogatorynot comparableusuallyOf or concerning actions undertaken by workers without approval or in defiance of the formal leadership of their trade unions.
3. not comparableengineeringOf or concerning customized or hand-made cartridges.
4. not comparableUnauthorized by the proper authorities.

   2003 June 15, CNN Jewish settlers have also been active putting up five new wildcat outposts on hilltops in the West Bank to try to thwart their Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

present singular third person wildcats · participle present wildcatting · participle past wildcatted · past wildcatted · alternative wild-cat · alternative wild cat

1. oil industryTo drill for oil in an area where no oil has been found before.

   You'd have to be very rich or very desperate to go wildcatting that far east.

   1 more example

   His pitch was that fracking had transformed the production of gas from a hit-or-miss proposition to one that operated with an on and off switch. It was manufacturing, not wildcatting.

   2018 August 30, Bethany McLean, “How America's ‘most reckless’ billionaire created the fracking boom”, in The Guardian