Capturing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of gaining control over a person or thing through effort or force ; the process of recording an image, sound, or data for preservation or analysis
2. Taking possession or making someone a prisoner by force or strategy ; the method of producing a permanent copy of a visual or electronic representation
3. Securing or apprehending something to keep or use it ; the capturing of visual or electronic information using devices

Etymology: "Capturing" is the present participle of "capture", and the verb it comes from entered English from Middle French "capture", which in turn came from Latin "captura", a noun built on "capere", meaning "to take" or "to seize". The Latin root is the same one behind "capable", "captive" and "catch"-family words, all of them rooted in the idea of grasping something. Some of those relatives arrived by different routes, so the connection is easier to see in the Latin than in English. Before French supplied this word, English had its own native verb for the same action, "fon" (or "gefon" in Old English), along with the noun "fang". Those older words were pushed aside, and "fang" survives today only in its narrower sense of an animal's tooth, a surprising leftover of the older vocabulary of seizing.

Synonyms: seizing, grabbing, taking, snaring, catching

Antonyms: releasing, liberating, letting go