[Ads-l] "Catfight" goes unisex.

[Laurence Horn]

> On Apr 30, 2016, at 1:48 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Radio's "Wait Don't Tell Me!"

Or as they call it when they're not under time pressure, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!"

Maybe the "catfight" *is* influenced by the "screaming diva" reference in the Nimoy-Shatner case; after all, we all know cats are female and dogs are male.  That wouldn't explain the 2004 example, though--I think "dogfight" may be narrowed for many speakers to precisely the aerial battle context you mention, so one-on-one altercations between actors of any sex rolling around on the set or screaming diva-style at each other would be more likely to be called catfights than dogfights.  

LH

> observes that _Star Trek_ was nearly canceled
> after Season 1 because Shatner and Nimoy "got into a screaming diva
> catfight."
> 
> I noted unisex "diva" here some years back.  As for "catfight," I was
> surprised to hear a battalion commander in Michael Ware's documentary _Only
> the Dead See the End of War_ warn his soldiers (in 2004) that they'd
> probably have a "catfight" in (I believe) Fallujah.
> 
> In olden days (as my grandparents used to say) a fierce fight might be
> called a "dogfight." The word was applied to aerial free-for-alls  during
> WW1. (My spellchecker wants "frees-for-all.")
> 
> Since a "catfight" has usually been an altercation between women, this ex.
> seems notable.
> 
> JL
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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