WILDCAT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Wildcat

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/wˈaɪldkˌæt/ Listen

Wildcat

noun

1.

An exploratory oil well drilled in land not known to be an oil field. Synonym: wildcat well.

2.

A cruelly rapacious person. Synonyms: beast, brute, savage, wolf.

3.

Any small or medium-sized cat resembling the domestic cat and living in the wild.

adjective

1.

Outside the bounds of legitimate or ethical business practices. "Wildcat stock speculation" , "A wildcat airline" , "Wildcat life insurance schemes"

2.

Without official authorization. Synonyms: unauthorised, unauthorized. "Wildcat work stoppage"

3.

(of a mine or oil well) drilled speculatively in an area not known to be productive. "A wildcat mine" , "Wildcat drilling" , "Wildcat wells"

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Etymology of 'Wildcat'

Related searches:

European wildcat

WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University

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"Wildcat" Quotes from Famous Books

... a sneaking wildcat, Puppy Reiss crept up and listened to the two women bewailing to each other how they had worked all the past week to clean up the house and scour the kitchen things, and complaining about all they had to do before Passover, so that not a crumb of leavened bread should stick ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... was that I had not a hundred dollars with which to bless myself, having just lost my small inheritance in a wildcat mining venture. ...

— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... byway, Satronius. Each of these two severally heard all the talk of the ambushers with whom he mingled; so I have had a faithful report of just what the Vedian ambush meant to do to the Satronian convoy they lay in wait for and similarly of the other side. Each was waiting for a sheep; both caught a wildcat. If the men in the ambushes had had any eyes or any sense, no fight would have occurred. As it was they got no more than they deserved. Hedulio was set on without provocation and merely defended ...

— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... her father and for his shortcomings she "woolled" him until his grizzled hair stood straight on end. Sudden protested, tried to hold her off at arm's length and found her all claws, like an excited wildcat. ...

— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... settlers. In countless cases the district irrigation bonds-which were offered broadcast by Eastern banks to their small investors—were hardly worth the paper on which they were written. One after another these wildcat irrigation schemes, purporting to assure sudden wealth in apples, pears, celery, garden truck, cherries, small fruits, alfalfa, pecans, eucalyptus or catalpa trees-anything you liked—went to the wall. Sometimes whole communities became straitened by the collapse of these overblown ...

— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

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