cat-and-mouse
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.18 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
suspenseful, involving alternating roles of attack and defence.
Example Sentences
- "From a cat-and-mouse sequence at a busy airport to a long car chase through Rome to a grand finale aboard a runaway train, each action scene tops the one before it."
- "Does that produce a different dynamic when they meet in battle? ‘It does,’ said Hoy. ‘I tell myself that it doesn’t matter who you race against, you try to expose their weaknesses. The only difference is that they know your weaknesses. It just makes it a bit more of a mind game, a cat-and-mouse strategy."
- "A cat-and-mouse thriller with delusions of grandeur, The Statement arrives wrapped in an intimidating mystique of high-minded solemnity that makes its vagueness and incoherence all the more disappointing when the pieces don't add up."
- "The Cinque Ports' navy had torn up and down the Channel harassing any marauding French; smugglers had cat-and-moused with revenue men over the marshes, into the woods."
- "You have actually "gone to contract" after months of cat-and-mousing with an editor who had to be convinced and who had to convince an editorial group of your punishability."
- "Light-headed we cat-and-moused, throttled down and sped up, weaving figure eights until ten miles from Biarritz, when we learned that even a Lightning Rocket is mortal."