# whip the cat

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/whip-the-cat
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

To attempt to get work or money from someone who is too weak or poor to provide it.

## Examples

- It is useless to whip the cat when the company has no money.
- The manager keeps demanding more sales from the struggling team, but he is just whipping the cat.
- By pressuring the impoverished villagers for further taxes, the local official was merely whipping the cat, as they had nothing left to give.

## Origin

The term emerges from a documented prank played at the expense of the gullible. In this diversion, a countryman was invited to display his physical strength by whipping a cat that had been harnessed to a load far exceeding its capacity. The amusement lay in the obvious futility of the task; a cat, regardless of the severity of the lash, is not a beast of burden. The practice is said to have informed the early sense of attempting to extract more from a source than it can possibly provide. This association with insufficiency migrated into the sphere of personal finance, where it came to denote extreme parsimony. The transition from a cruel rural joke to a description of a man who would skin a flint was completed by the linguistic connection to poverty and general uselessness. (disputed)

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.