If you place things diagonally, for example on the opposite corners of a four-way intersection, it’s sometimes said that those things are “kitty corner” to each other. Most people seem to know what that means, but hardly anybody knows why “kitty corner” came to have that meaning.
It all started with dice. People have used dice practically forever, and around the 1300s or so English dice players began to adopt French words for some of the sides. The three was a “trey,” from the Old French “trei,” and the four was a “cater,” from the French “quatre.” It might have been in self defence; when somebody asked “why are you wasting all that time rolling dice” they could claim to be working on language skills. Anyway, the spots on the four side of a die are in the corners, and it’s an easy example if you’re trying to explain a diagonal; you just imagine (or draw) a line across two opposite corners.
By the 1500s “cater” meant to move diagonally as well as to place things diagonally. The first syllable was probably pronounced “cat,” and that’s just about to become important. “Cater” was used in various combinations in different dialects, including “caterwise” and “caterways,” and by the early 1800s in the US, “cater corner.”
By then, of course, the original connection to the French “quatre” was long forgotten, and since “cater corner” sounded like it had something to do with cats, “kitty corner” got switched in and everybody still knew what it meant. How the cats felt about this is not recorded.
