Catty-corner, kitty-corner, and cater-cornered all derive from the Middle English catre-corner, meaning literally four-cornered. All three forms are used throughout the English-speaking world, and none is more correct than the others. They usually mean positioned diagonally across a four-way intersection, but they can work in other contexts relating to one thing being diagonal from another.
While most dictionaries recommend cater-cornered, kitty-corner and catty-corner are more common in real-world speech. The past-participle forms—i.e., kitty-cornered and catty-cornered—are usually more grammatically correct, but the uninflected forms are more common.
Here are a few examples of the various forms put to use:
Kitty-corner from Brownstone in Fort Worth, Fred’s serves terrific sloppy burgers and great fries. [Dallas Morning News]
The child then pointed catty-corner across Santa Rosa Avenue … [Santa Rosa Press Democrat]
His trailer is cater-cornered to the crime scene, a fact he admitted shook him a little. [Columbia Daily Tribune]
Cowboys Stadium technically is in Arlington, Texas—not Dallas—kitty-cornered from where the Giants won the World Series in November. [San Jose Mercury News]
None of these is correct or incorrect. The use of to following kitty-cornered is grammatically questionable but not necessarily out of place when used with these colloquial words.
The one thing not to do when using any of these words is to leave out the crucial hyphen, as this writer does:
She also owned a store that sat kitty corner to the cheese factory … [Wayne Post]
