Kitty Catty Corner

It's interesting to learn the roots of "kitty-catty-caddy-whatever-cornered" (Mother Tongue Annoyances » "Kitty Catty Corner"). Here's the low down:

"Interestingly, both catty corner and kitty corner are regional dialectical variations of a word that has nothing whatsoever to do with cats: cater-cornered. The Oxford English Dictionary defines this adverb and adjective as 'Also catacornered, catercorner, catty-cornered, etc. Diagonally; diagonal. So cater-cornering, catty-cornering.

The Maven's Word of the Day provides a nice etymology:

The 'cater' element in this term is from the English dialect word cater, meaning 'diagonally', which is from an obsolete word meaning 'four', which eventually goes back to quattuor, the Latin word for 'four'.. . .

The Phrase Finder explains how cater became kitty and catty:

But by a process known to language students as 'folk etymology,' the ordinary users of the term thought they detected an analogy to the ordinary domestic feline. Hence 'cater' soon became 'catty' and eventually 'kitty.'"

Well, I couldN’T care less. (sorry, that’s a pet peeve of mine).

But I’m glad to hear that there is a proper term to use in this context. Most such linguistic “conflicts” seem to have a “right” answer. Though some may pooh-pooh the concept, there is a value in having norms or standards of language. For example, it is stupid in my opinion that some people now use the word “bad” to mean some variation of “good.”

As noted in MTA, many regional dialectical differences are actually only differences between lazy linguists from the respective regions–between the people who don’t care about what is a proper term or word.

However, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using slang or regionalisms, as long as everyone acknowledges that such terms are slang and not “proper,” right?

Hat-tip, NashvilleisTalking