1836.—"None can compare to the Catamarans and the wonderful people that manage them ... each catamaran has one, two, or three men ... they sit crouched upon their heels, throwing their paddles about very dexterously, but very unlike rowing."—Letters from Madras, 34.
1860.—"The Cattamaran is common to Ceylon and Coromandel."—Tennent, Ceylon, i. 442.
[During the war with Napoleon, the word came to be applied to a sort of fire-ship. "Great hopes have been formed at the Admiralty (in 1804) of certain vessels which were filled with combustibles and called catamarans."—(Ld. Stanhope, Life of Pitt, iv. 218.) This may have introduced the word in English and led to its use as 'old cat' for a shrewish hag.]
CATECHU, also CUTCH and CAUT, s. An astringent extract from the wood of several species of Acacia (Acacia catechu, Willd.), the khair, and Acacia suma, Kurz, Ac. sundra, D. C. and probably more. The extract is called in H. kaṭh, [Skt. kvath, 'to decoct'], but the two first commercial names which we have given are doubtless taken from the southern forms of the word, e.g. Can. kāchu, Tam. kāsu, Malay kachu. De Orta, whose judgments are always worthy of respect, considered it to be the lycium of the ancients, and always applied that name to it; but Dr. Royle has shown that lycium was an extract from certain species of berberis, known in the bazars as rasōt. Cutch is first mentioned by Barbosa, among the drugs imported into Malacca. But it remained unknown in Europe till brought from Japan about the middle of the 17th century. In the 4th ed. of Schröder's Pharmacop. Medico-chymica, Lyons, 1654, it is briefly described as Catechu or Terra Japonica, "genus terrae exoticae" (Hanbury and Flückiger, 214). This misnomer has long survived.
1516.—"... drugs from Cambay; amongst which there is a drug which we do not possess, and which they call puchô (see [PUTCHOCK]) and another called cachô."—Barbosa, 191.
1554.—"The bahar of Cate, which here (at Ormuz) they call cacho, is the same as that of rice."—A. Nunes, 22.
1563.—"Colloquio XXXI. Concerning the wood vulgarly called Cate; and containing profitable matter on that subject."—Garcia, f. 125.
1578.—"The Indians use this Cate mixt with Areca, and with Betel, and by itself without other mixture."—Acosta, Tract. 150.
1585.—Sassetti mentions catu as derived from the Khadira tree, i.e. in modern Hindi the Khair (Skt. khadira).
[1616.—"010 bags Catcha."—Foster, Letters, iv. 127.]