Cat Fight

Overview

First recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as the title of a poem by Ebenezer Mack in 1824. It is first recorded as being used to describe a fight between women in 1854.

Feminist historians say use of the term cat fight to label female opponents goes back to 1940, when American newspapers characterized as a cat fight a dispute between Clare Boothe Luce and journalist Dorothy Thompson over which candidate to support in the 1940 Presidential campaign.

The term only started appearing in American popular culture in the 1950's when the beginnings of the pornography industry began using clips of women fighting and wrestling.