Cheshire cat

noun

a constantly grinning cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Cheshire cat

A cat with an enormous grin encountered by Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll . The cat tends to disappear, leaving only its smile hanging in the air.

“Smiling like a Cheshire cat” refers to anyone with a conspicuous and long-lasting smile.

But on the Cheshire-cat hypothesis, the social problem can never be solved, because it is not a real problem at all.

Leila relaxed exaggeratedly in her chair, her Cheshire-cat smile predominating her features.

Alice was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire-Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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