Catch

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kat͡ʃ/

Definitions

1. To intercept and hold something moving through the air, or to discover someone doing something wrong
2. To seize or grasp an object during motion, or to perceive a wrongdoing in someone's actions
3. To grab an item that is thrown or in transit, or to identify an act of mischief or error

Etymology: Catch is a doublet of "chase", and the two words split apart only after a long journey through French. Both descend from Latin "captare", a frequentative of "capere" ("to take"), which means "to keep trying to seize" something. In Vulgar Latin this became "captiare", and it passed into Old French as "chacier", the source of modern French "chasser" and Spanish "cazar". Chase came into English from that French branch, keeping the sense of pursuing, while catch arrived in Middle English as "cacchen" through the Anglo-Norman form "cachier", and it narrowed toward seizing a thing in motion. The verb's past tense is irregular, and the likely reason is a neighbouring word. "Latch", from Old English "laecc an", had a past tense "laught", and the two verbs were semantically close enough that they may have influenced each other, until "catch" was eventually regularised in Modern English.

Synonyms: grab, capture, intercept, seize, snag

Antonyms: release, let go, miss