Cat Melodeon
Awful. Terrible. Used of an outcome, situation, or performance that has gone disastrously: 'the gig was cat melodeon' = the gig was awful. The image is of a cat playing a melodeon - a cacophonous noise made by a creature with no business at the instrument.
Etymology
A compound built from 'cat' (the animal) plus 'melodeon' (the small button accordion). The image is a folk construction: a cat trying to play an instrument is a comic disaster, and the phrase preserves that absurdity. The melodeon was the working-class Irish dance-music instrument of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which gives the phrase a particular cultural setting. Documented in Ulster Scots informal speech with no firm etymology beyond the obvious folk-imagery.
In a sentence
"The new restaurant was cat melodeon - cold soup, lukewarm chips, the lot."
Historical notes
Cat melodeon is one of the most distinctively local Hiberno-English phrases - a folk metaphor that has stayed inside its dialect. Modern Ulster speakers may say 'cat melodeon', 'cat altogether', or simply 'cat' on its own (Belfast slang for 'awful') with the melodeon implied. The word 'cat' as an adjective meaning 'awful' is heard widely in Northern Ireland and is itself worth its own entry; cat melodeon is the elaborated form.
Sources
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary