wikipedia says this about the origin of the term cat gut: Etymology The word catgut may have originated from the word kitgut, or kitstring, the word kit meaning fiddle. It is thought to have been confused at some point with the word kitty for little cat.
I've heard other theories. On 1 Apr 2009, at 12:36, Anthony Hind wrote: > Alexander > Do you have the page? One would suppose that the first was > sheep gut, but I would like to look at that more closely. > > The problem is whether a confusion had already crept in about "cat", > at the time of Burwell. The author may have been translating the > French expression "boyau de chat", in which case we are no closer to > knowing what the origin was. > > If sheep is actually written as "ship" then the person who wrote it > down could have been effected somehow by French. We all know that > many French speakers, make no difference between "sheep" and "ship", > but without looking at the text it is hard to guess. > Anthony -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
