not enough room to swing a cat

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Idioms and Phrases

Very little space, cramped quarters, as in There's not enough room to swing a cat in this tent . This expression, first recorded in 1771, is thought to allude to the cat-o'-nine-tails, or “cat,” a whip with nine lashes widely used to punish offenders in the British military.

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

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