Gato
/ˈɡɑː.toʊ/noun
A cat; in Spanish and Portuguese, a male cat.
Did you know?Spanish gato and Portuguese gato come from Vulgar Latin *cattus, a word that spread so widely it became the ancestor of cat-words in many European languages.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*kat-
“An uncertain pre-Latin cat-word sometimes proposed as the distant source of later cat terms.”
Late Latin
Latin
cattus
“Cat.”
Vulgar Latin
VL
cattus
“Cat; the everyday spoken form that spread across Europe.”
Old Spanish
OSp
gato
“Cat.”
Modern Spanish
Spanish
gato
“Cat; also used figuratively in some slang and idioms.”