@RusA #9857392 Yeah, the term "wild cat" is ambiguous, and would be understood in context. Usually it means lions and tigers and such, but if your neighbor said that there's a wild cat that keeps getting into the dumpsters, we'd all understand he means a stray cat.
"Wildcat", one word, means the wild felines that domestic cats descend from, that still look very much like them.
The article says, "Not to be confused with feral cat", which is another word for stray cats. . I mentioned the word "feral" in our conversation about children raised by animals - that word means domestic animals that have escaped captivity and live in the wild, like cats, dogs, horses, or whatever. Amusingly enough, Australians tried to use camels to travel across the Outback, but it didn't work out, so they turned the camels loose. The result is that there are herds of feral camels roaming about the Australian Outback. Our Army tried that in the Southwestern desert just before the Civil War, and that didn't work out any better. There are stories of feral camels still living in the desert, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to them. There was a movie made about the U.S. Camel Corp, though.
English is all full of slang - your car or automobile can also be your wheels or your ride, besides all the things I mentioned in my Funny Word post. ~9854893 We also mix English with foreign words, as in Spanglish (Spanish and English, popular in the Southwest) or Yinglish (Yiddish and English, which describes the speech of many Jews) As for blanking out on the right word, nearly everyone who speaks English as a second language does that - even us native speakers, which is why we have terms like "Whats-his-name" and "Doohickey". Another Funny Word post: ~9821878
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@RusA #9857392 Yeah, the term "wild cat" is ambiguous, and would be understood in context. Usually it means lions and tigers and such, but if your neighbor said that there's a wild cat that keeps getting into the dumpsters, we'd all understand he means a stray cat.
"Wildcat", one word, means the wild felines that domestic cats descend from, that still look very much like them.
The article says, "Not to be confused with feral cat", which is another word for stray cats. . I mentioned the word "feral" in our conversation about children raised by animals - that word means domestic animals that have escaped captivity and live in the wild, like cats, dogs, horses, or whatever. Amusingly enough, Australians tried to use camels to travel across the Outback, but it didn't work out, so they turned the camels loose. The result is that there are herds of feral camels roaming about the Australian Outback. Our Army tried that in the Southwestern desert just before the Civil War, and that didn't work out any better. There are stories of feral camels still living in the desert, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to them. There was a movie made about the U.S. Camel Corp, though.
English is all full of slang - your car or automobile can also be your wheels or your ride, besides all the things I mentioned in my Funny Word post. ~9854893 We also mix English with foreign words, as in Spanglish (Spanish and English, popular in the Southwest) or Yinglish (Yiddish and English, which describes the speech of many Jews) As for blanking out on the right word, nearly everyone who speaks English as a second language does that - even us native speakers, which is why we have terms like "Whats-his-name" and "Doohickey". Another Funny Word post: ~9821878