curiosity killed the cat
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Excessive curiosity can lead to trouble or danger
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Sự tò mò quá mức có thể dẫn đến rắc rối hoặc nguy hiểm
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: a cat dying due to its curiosity
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Eventually someone put him out of his misery and told him, between guffaws, that he was in fact conversing with has - been ' 80s saddoes CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT.
The townspeople had learned the hard way that curiosity killed the cat — you stayed indoors if there was trouble.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “List of proverbial phrases” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “curiosity killed the cat” mean?
Excessive curiosity can lead to trouble or danger Literally: a cat dying due to its curiosity
Is “curiosity killed the cat” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.