dead cat

English

A dead cat (etymology 1) on a microphone.

Etymology 1

Named for its resemblance to an actual dead cat.

Noun

dead cat (plural dead cats)

1. (cinematography, sound engineering) A furry coverlet placed over a microphone to muffle the sound of wind.
   • 2012 August 16, Neil Oseman, Inside the Director's Folder:

     "A camera operator needs batteries, lenses, cards, filters. A wardrobe supervisor has racks of costumes. A sound recorder carries a dead cat on a stick. But a director only needs his folder."

   • 2019, July 2. "Film 101: What Is a Boom Operator? Understanding the Job of a Boom Operator", Masterclass.com.

     "The mic blimp is a wind-resistant cover that goes over the boom mic to reduce environmental background noise. It's commonly referred to as a "dead cat", because it's covered in fuzzy gray hair."

Etymology 2

Introduced by former UK prime minister Boris Johnson in 2013 (at which point he was mayor of London) in a column for The Daily Telegraph.

Noun

dead cat (plural dead cats)

1. (politics, neologism) A shocking or sensational announcement made in order to distract one's political base from existing problems and previous failures.
   • 2019 November 19, Charlotte Lydia Riley, “Dear journalists: please stop calling everything a “dead cat””, in Prospect Magazine‎^[2], archived from the original on 2023-01-06:

     The problem is that once the idea of the dead cat had been discovered, suddenly there were deceased felines everywhere. Everything was a dead cat—every policy, every interview, every gaffe. Everything existed only to detract attention from something else.

   • 2021 December 8, George Parker, Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, Jim Pickard, Sebastian Payne, “Boris Johnson bets on a 'dead cat' strategy to get him out of trouble”, in Financial Times‎^[3], archived from the original on 2021-12-08:

     Boris Johnson looked strained as he entered the House of Commons at midday on Wednesday, hoping that a "dead cat" and an apology over Downing Street parties would dig him out of his latest political hole.

   • 2021 December 12, Stewart Lee, “More sacrifices for Boris, the fool king of pantomime Britain”, in The Guardian‎^[4], archived from the original on 2022-12-03:

     But by Wednesday night, a massive dead cat was required to distract from a day of denied parties and prioritised pets, so Johnson banged plan B on the kitchen table, alienating backbench Covid sceptics.

Verb

dead cat (third-person singular simple present dead cats, present participle dead catting, simple past and past participle dead catted)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To announce (something) as a dead cat; to raise an issue as a political distraction.
   • 2021, Otto English, Fake History, page 170:

     Long picked scars and carefully nurtured injustices can serve a purpose, and we can see it in Obrador's dead catting, the narrative of Brexit, the saga of the Falkland Islands, the Greek financial crisis, and independence movements in democratic nations across Europe.

   • 2021, Grant Rodwell, Education Policy and the Political Right:

     A part of the Right's offensive, however, was to not only be bloody, bold, resolute and brief in their media messaging, but also be smart in their use of dead-catting, a media offensive technique to which this book to which this book has previously referred.

See also

• dead cat bounce

 

Further reading

• dead cat strategy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia