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chessy cat

An older American dialectal form of 'Cheshire cat' — the grinning feline from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, or more broadly the folk saying about grins as wide as a Cheshire cat's.

ˈt͡ʃɛsi ˈkæthistorical1.5K viewsLast reviewed Jun 29, 2026+ Add a definition
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#1·Apr 28, 2026

An older American dialectal form of 'Cheshire cat' — the grinning feline from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, or more broadly the folk saying about grins as wide as a Cheshire cat's. 'Chessy cat' drops the county name into a casual nickname, the way Americans sometimes compress proper nouns into cozier forms. It's used figuratively for someone sporting an enormous, self-satisfied, or mysterious grin — the kind of smile that makes you wonder what they know that you don't.

She walked in looking like the chessy cat — turns out she'd already seen the surprise and was waiting for everyone else to figure it out.
Origin: Shortened and Americanized form of 'Cheshire cat', from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The Cheshire cat was already a folk idiom before Carroll, with roots in 19th-century English dialect. Editorial expansion authored on Slangora (model-assisted, hedged).
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#2·Apr 26, 2026

(US, slang) A Cheshire cat.

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