verb
- simple past tense and past participle of catch.
verb
- the past tense and past participle of catch
past tense and past participle of catch (v.), attested from 14c., predominant after c.1800, replacing earlier catched. A rare instance of English strong verb with a French origin. This might have been by influence of Middle English lacchen (see latch (v.)), which also then meant “to catch” and was a synonym of catch (as their noun forms remain), and which then had past tense forms lahte, lauhte, laught. The influence happened before latch switched to its modern weak conjugation. In addition to the idioms beginning with caught
, also see under