Catcher

How to spell catcher

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce catcher

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does catcher mean?

1. nounA person or device that catches something, especially someone whose role is to receive or seize an object.

Catcher in a sentence

• The dog was a reliable catcher of any ball thrown across the yard.

• In baseball the catcher crouches behind home plate to receive each pitch.

Where does catcher come from?

Language of origin: French

The word is built on the verb catch, which English took from Anglo-Norman French cachier, a northern variant of the Old French chacier meaning 'to chase or hunt'. That French verb in turn descends from an unrecorded Late Latin captiare, a frequentative formed from the Latin capere, meaning 'to take or seize'. So at its heart catch shares an ancestor with words like capture, captive, and even chase, which is really the same Latin root that travelled through central France instead. The agent suffix -er, a very old Germanic ending meaning 'a person who does the thing', was then added to give 'one who catches', a formation first common in English from the late medieval period. The everyday spelling trap is simply the silent t in the -tch- cluster, since the word sounds like 'cacher' but keeps the t that catch carries.

How the word is built

• catch (to seize or capture)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)