Cat table
The cat table is a colloquial term for separate places that do not belong to the table arrangement or are poorly placed, such as an extra table that is reserved for children (e.g. at parties) or the chauffeur . In restaurants , cat tables are usually the tables near doors (e.g. to the kitchen or the toilets), i. H. in places in the room where other people pass relatively often or where drafts occur.
Figurative sense
As a figurative expression , the cat table also describes a separate, prominent, but not very advantageous place in a community, the place on the side, in the 18th and 19th centuries also "bad position, poor supply, bad food". For example, also former owners or sit manager of a company, the majority of shares have lost them but a lifelong right to remain, due to contractual agreements office , a secretary and a company car is provided, at the children's table . You are sometimes allowed to take part in meetings and express your views, but especially in the case of votes, you no longer have any influence on the decisions to be made (see also Breakfast Director ).
etymology
The origin of the word ( etymology ) can be dated to the 17th century . It goes back to an initially joking name for the floor . A later mention can be found in 1670. The phrase, sitting at the cat table as a punishment , “for 'eating away from the community (on the floor or at a low table)' [...] seems to come from monastic life ”.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hanna Grimm: "Word of the Week - Cat Table" , Deutsche Welle , September 21, 2009.
- ↑ a b Friedrich Kluge : Etymological dictionary of the German language , 24th edition 2002, de Gruyter: Berlin. P. 479.
- ↑ Matthias Abele von und zu Lilienberg : Artificial Disorder, That is: Miraculous-Strange judicial and out-of-court incidents that never came under public pressure: mostly from my own experience . Endter, 1670, p. 300.
