tear a cat en · VERB
Meanings
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(idiomatic, obsolete) To overact; to violently rant and rave on stage.
From this performance there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Hamlet is an amateur actor having a fling at histrionics, or as Guthrie might say, "tearing a cat."
1970, Alfred Rossi, Minneapolis Rehearsals: Tyrone Guthrie Directs Hamlet, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 21:Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant. I could play / Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in, to make all split.
c. 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 2:Till, in his periwig combustion / Will. Shakespeare sounds like Irish fustian, / In which Macready tears a cat, / And Shiel, the patriot, writes so pat;
1835, George Daniel, “The Conversazione”, in The Modern Dunciad, William Pickering, page 224:Sirha is this you would rend and teare the Cat / Upon a Stage, and now march like drown'd rat?
c. 1599, John Marston, Histriomastix, act 5, scene 1, page [53]:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| tore a cat | Tense=Past | lexicographic | |
| torn a cat | Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic | |
| tears a cat | Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres | lexicographic | |
| tearing a cat | Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part | lexicographic |
Relateds
Synonyms
melodramatize · ham it up · overact · chew the scenery · ham