Definition of "hellcat" [hellcat]

• A woman regarded as bad-tempered and evil. (noun)
• A woman who practices sorcery; a witch. (noun)
• Informal A person who torments others. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "( "hellcat" Ida & slapping prostitute), and (as you suggest) combination good-mother/bad-mother (Peggy)."
• "She was "brimful of hellcat fury," he wrote last week, recalling an episode that was presumably the 1968 equivalent of Paltrow striving to be "strong and not strident"."
• "Cheered on by a Washington media rooting section that could only be portrayed by a cackling Heath Ledger brought back from the dead and replicated to fill every seat at Politico, Edwards is now caricatured as a shrill, unhinged she-devil rending her garments in airports and slicing the Achilles tendons of underlings with the vicious alacrity of a demanding hellcat."