Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- A medieval name for China popularized by Marco Polo in accounts of his travels. It usually applied only to the area north of the Yangtze River.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun China; -- an old name for the Celestial Empire, said have been introduced by Marco Polo and to be a corruption of the Tartar name for North China (
Khitai , the country of the Khitans.)
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun The name that was given to northern
China by Marco Polo - proper noun by extension, an alternate name for China.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a communist nation that covers a vast territory in eastern Asia; the most populous country in the world
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Cathay.
Examples
-
But I think Cathay is a strategically strong carrier ...
-
Fourth, many Americans put credence in Cathay for the simple reason that they wanted to do so.
The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876 2005
-
Apart from Citic, which has a 12.5 per cent stake in Cathay Pacific, 46 per cent in Dragonair, 15 per cent in the Coca-Cola bottling company in China, and 50 per cent in the recent Hong Kong land acquisition that I just mentioned, our Chinese partners include the China National Aviation Corporation, China Travel, China Merchants Holdings and a number of local and regional mainland companies.
-
Citic is content with minority shareholdings in Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Telecom because the Chinese shareholders prefer it to be clear that the companies which have made these operations successful continue to control them.
-
The pagoda has probably been scattered to the four winds of heaven, and the ship on which I journeyed from Ireland to Cathay is lying on the corals, with mermaids sleeping in its berths and swimming in and out the portholes.
-
"'Tis as fine as the silk I handled in Cathay, pusskins."
-
At eleven at night this transplanted city of Cathay is still all alive; the streets crowded with a moving stream of black blouses and yellow faces – every one cheerful, chattering, and wide awake.
-
"Far in the East is the great country that we call Cathay, though in truth it has many other names, and I alone of all who breathe in England have visited that land."
Red Eve Henry Rider Haggard 1890
-
The folk marvelled at this quill, when they saw it, and the man who was called Abd al-Rahman the Moor (and he was known, to boot, as the Chinaman, for his long sojourn in Cathay), related to them the following adventure, one of many of his traveller’s tales of marvel.
-
Shanghai officials pressed the state-run owner of the historic Peace Hotel, formerly called the Cathay Hotel, to undertake a multimillion-dollar renovation.
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.