like a cat in a strange garret
English
[edit]Prepositional phrase
[edit]like a cat in a strange garret
- (US, simile) Having a feeling of uncertainty and misapprehension due to being in an unfamiliar situation.
- 1851 June – 1852 April, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Boston, Mass.: John P[unchard] Jewett & Company; Cleveland, Oh.: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, published 20 March 1852, →OCLC:
- Well, mass'r, I can't say for Lucinda and Dinah, but I should feel like a cat in a strange garret.
- 1862 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Vermont Board of Education
- Mothers cannot conveniently leave home to get about, and fathers, to use their own expression, "feel like a cat in a strange garret," when screwed up in one of the seats to the school house.