not enough room to swing a cat

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.16 in modern English

Scrabble Score

Letters

Syllables

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

Informal; Uncountable

"1665, Richard Kephale Medela Pestilentiae They had not space enough (according to the vulgar saying) to swing a Cat in."
"My own apartment, to take a case in point, was a sort of hermit's cell in which one would have been hard put to it to swing a cat, even a smaller one than Augustus, not of course that one often wants to do much cat-swinging."

Attested 1665, by which point already in common use; perhaps of naval slang origin. While it is frequently stated that the phrase is derived from cat-o’-nine-tails (“type of whip”), this latter term is only attested from 1695, and hence this idiom presumably derived from literally swinging a cat around, as by the tail.

packed like sardines

packed like sardines confined cramped tiny

Questions

How to pronounce not enough room to swing a cat

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “not enough room to swing a cat”.

Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.

Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “not enough room to swing a cat”.

Repeat and practice — Say “not enough room to swing a cat” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.