Jellicle Cats - Wordsmith.org

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I took my darling bride to see CATS staged at the Everett Performing Arts Center and it was a very fine production. She was paying attention and asked me in the car going home what "Jellicle" means as in "Jellicle Cats." I mumbled something about T.S. Eliot and tried to slide by on my ignorance with my pride intact. That never works.

Some sources suggest that "jellicle" is a contraction of "angelical."

Others opine that this is a description of the tuxedo cat: black and white with white paws and chest.

I have no idea. Do you?

Jellicle is a new dessert treat that the Jello people have in beta testing. It's made by dripping liquid Jello off the edge of eaves in Canada and waiting for the running liquid to gel and freeze at the same time. One of their closely guarded secrets up until you blew the gaff was the name, which is a combination of Jello and icicle. Their lawyers will be around to see you later in the morning.

Actually no, I don't have the slightest idea where it came from but your razor appears to have shaved more closely than mine.

I always thought it was just a made-up word.

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I always thought it was just a made-up word.

Aren't they all?

heh.

I always thought it was just a made-up word - yeahbut - is it a word, or "just" a name?

185,000 hits seems to indicate the term has become a neologism, while it appears to be an adjective. Unfortunately, you can't Google in lower case; so any non-registered connotation would save me the trouble of plodding through every single page of hits--Thanks all for all present and past help

googling "jellicle cats" and "t. s. eliot" yields the phrase
"pollicle dogs and jellicle cats"; continuing the search with this phrase gives:

A defining moment in the series is when Eliot introduces the feline creatures of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to the three-year-old Tom. He writes: "I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!! For Instance It Straightens The Pictures - It Does The Grates - Looks Into the Larder To See What's Needed - And Into The Dustbin To See That Nothing's Wasted - And Yet Is So Lillie And Small That It Can Sit On my Ear (Of course I had to draw my Ear rather Bigger than it is to get the Liilicat onto it)."

Just before Tom's fourth birthday, Eliot sends him a verse "Invitation to All Pollicle Dogs & Jellicle Cats To Come To The Birthday Of Thomas Faber", beginning: "Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats!/ Come from your Kennels & Houses & Flats�" (this hitherto unpublished poem was incorporated into the lyrics of the Prologue of Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Trevor Nunn's critically acclaimed musical Cats.

stating that jellicle cats are such and so are probably just as fanciful.

tsu: Thank you for your unending scholarship and helpfulness. Apparently then "Jellicle" means "unusually smart for a beast" and I wonder if anyone has encountered other usages that might be classified as neologism

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tsu: Thank you for your unending scholarship and helpfulness. Apparently then "Jellicle" means "unusually smart for a beast" and I wonder if anyone has encountered other usages that might be classified as neologism

stating that jellicle cats are such and so are probably just as fanciful.

dh, you seem to be interested in neologisms in general.

Tsu: Neologisms and late-century slang. It's an obsession, and I've tried to quit but I can't

Oops, should we have begun a new thread