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cat and mouse
[ kat uhn mous ]
noun
- Also called cat and rat. a children's game in which players in a circle keep a player from moving into or out of the circle and permit a second player to move into or out of the circle to escape the pursuing first player.
- Western U.S. tick-tack-toe ( def 1 ).
Word History and Origins
Origin of cat and mouse1
Idioms and Phrases
- play cat and mouse with,
- to toy or trifle with.
- to use strategy on one's opponent, especially while waiting to strike:
The detective played cat and mouse with the suspect.
- play cat and mouse, to engage in a gamelike relationship in which evasion and pursuit are used:
They played cat and mouse for a while before she consented to go out with him.
Example Sentences
So Western governments are caught in a cat-and-mouse game and at times it is unclear who is the cat and who the mouse.
He became suspicious and so began what he refers to as a “cat-and-mouse game” between him and his former agency.
The revelations in October began a game of cat-and-mouse between the Demon Killer and the police.
Meanwhile, I don't know what happens to the employees, who are the mouse in this cat-and-mouse game.
Lipkin-Shahak was no stranger to the cat-and-mouse dynamic that has so often kept the Middle East in a chokehold.
Did it mean that, after all, he had been playing at cat-and-mouse with her, as she had at first feared?
I thought the agony was over, but I didn't give Small credit for cat-and-mouse tendencies.
How much longer are you going to keep up this fiendish cat-and-mouse sort of game?
At least, I haven't got that cat-and-mouse kind of patience.
It was a sort of defiance that he was throwing at me, an ultimatum that I should either end my cat-and-mouse game, or let him go.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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