The History of <catch>

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The spelling pattern <vowel + ugh + t> is an indicator of a word of Old English origin and for all the parent verbs that use this pattern for their past tense form it is true, except for one: <catch>. According to John Ayto in his “Dictionary of Word Origins” <catch> came in to English in the 13th century and “originally meant ‘chase, hunt’, however, it quickly moved on to be applied to the next logical step in the procedure, ‘capture’ and by the early 16th century the meaning of ’chase’ was becoming obsolete.” Ayto goes on to suggest that “<catch> might be said to be harking back to its ultimate roots in Latin capere ‘take’, source of English capture. Its past participle, captus, provided the basis for the new verb captāre ‘try to seize, chase’. In Vulgar Latin this became altered to *captiāre, source of the Old French chacier (whence English chase) and the corresponding Anglo-Norman cachier (whence English catch.)” However, his explanation does nothing to explain how this word of French origin came to have a past tense and participle with Old English spelling. I needed to look elsewhere for that story. Browsing every single word origin book I own (and I have quite a few) I found two accounts that supported each other and Ayto’s account; one in the “Chambers Dictionary of Etymology’ and the other in the ‘Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories.’

The History of <catch> and How It Came To Be <caught> Not <catched>

Catch, in the form cacchen (with numerous spellings) was borrowed into English from the Old North French word cachier some time around 1200. Its original meaning was ‘to chase’ as in hunting. Very early in its history catch became used in its basic modern sense, ‘to capture or seize after pursuit’. This development of our modern word catch came about through an interesting intertwining of the words catch, chase and latch.

The Old North French ancestor of catch, cachier, is assumed to have derived from a verb *captiāre in Vulgar Latin, which is also the presumed ancestor of Medieval French chasser. (Vulgar Latin is so scantily recorded that many words must be assumed from a comparison of classical Latin and the descendant Roman languages). It is chasser from which Middle English took chasen, which became our modern chase. Latch, meaning ‘grasp, seize’, as in “to latch onto something,” is strictly a native word, coming from Old English læccan by way of Middle English lacchen. The closeness of the forms cacchen and lacchen apparently led to their ultimately sharing the sense of ‘grasp’. At about the same time chasen came into use and soon took over from catch the use they both had shared.

So far the Merriam-Webster account seems to reflect what Ayto had to say about the origins of <catch>. But the account continues ...

The History of <catch> and...

Excerpt from Merriam-Webster
New Book of Word Histories pp 93-94

Catch is very unusual in being a verb imported from French but having a strong past tense inflection <caught>, which is usually a characteristic of words of Old English origin. The form caught did not come into English from French but was formed by analogy with the original strong past tense of latch, which used to be laught. When latch came into modern English it lost its strong inflection; catch inherited it. Yet catch also had a weak-inflection form, like most verbs borrowed from French, and came into Modern English with two competing forms, catched and caught.

Such a reason is plausible because many words in English were affected in this way and the Chambers account seems to support it. (See the excerpt opposite for the Chambers account).

So are children really so wrong to use <catched> when it is the most regular form of the past tense? What happened to prevent <catched> from catching on?

why <caught>...?

The fickleness of literary use with respect to catched and caught is curious. The King James Bible used caught. Shakespeare used mostly caught, but catched once in a while, so did Spenser. Ben Jonson used both, but Marlowe in his plays and Sidney in his poems used only caught. Milton used both, but caught more often than catched. Bunyan used catched. Donne used both. Catched can be found in Steele and Isaac Watts. Defoe seems to have used both about equally. Pope used both forms. But Dryden and Swift used only caught. Samuel Johnson used caught in his poetry and catched in his conversation. But after the time of Boswell and Johnson it is hard to find literary catched. The poets at the turn of the 19th century—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats—all used caught, as did the novelists Jane Austen and Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Catched has now receded into dialectal use only.

And there you have the reason—the fickleness of literary use.

Ayto, John: Word Origins - The Hidden Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd Edition, A&C Black, London, 2005

The Merriam -Webster: New Book of Word Histories: Merriam-Webster Inc, Mass, 1991

...but not <catched>?

Chambers account of <catch>

Excerpt from
Chambers Dictionary of Etymology

catch v Probably before 1200 cacchen, cahten ‘capture, ensnare, receive, chase’, in Layamon’s Chronicle of Britain and Ancrene Riwle, borrowed from Anglo-French or Old North French cacher, cachier ‘catch or capture (animals), chase, hunt’, from Vulgar Latin *captiāre, (attested only in the form of Medieval Latin caciare), from Latin captāre ’try to catch, seek, chase’ frequentative form conveying repeated or continued action of capere ’to take’. (source of captive). Doublet of <chase> ‘hunt’.

The past tense of the verb, caught, is a rare instance of a strong verb in a root of French origin. Its development probably stems from the influence of the native verb latch (Middle English lacchen, lichen, Old English læccan, læcan) which also had the meaning ‘to catch, ensnare, lie in wait for’ and very early was treated as a synonym of catch, gradually replacing the Old and Middle English forms of the verb after 1300. Hence the Middle English past tense cahte, cauhte, caughte, caught was apparently patterned on lathe, lauhte, laughter, laught, the past tense of lacchen. But while in modern English latch became a weak verb (latched, latching), the regular past tense form of catch (cached, catchte, catched) was superseded in the 1800’s by caught in literary use, though catched is still heard in dialectal or untutored speech. In the noun it will be noted that catch and latch are still synonymous in the meaning “a thing that catches as in: ‘The catch on the gate is not fastened.’”