Hitch

How to spell hitch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hitch

What does hitch mean?

1. nounA temporary problem, delay, or obstacle that interrupts something otherwise going smoothly.
2. verbTo fasten or attach one thing to another, especially with a rope, hook, or coupling.
3. verbTo obtain a free ride by signalling to passing vehicles.

Hitch in a sentence

• noun

  The move went ahead without a single hitch.

• verb

  They had to hitch the caravan to the back of the truck before leaving.

• verb

  When the bus broke down he decided to hitch a lift into town.

• noun

  A minor hitch in the paperwork delayed the closing by a day.

• verb

  Please hitch the trailer securely so it does not come loose on the motorway.

• verb

  Students sometimes hitch a ride home for the holidays to save money.

Where does hitch come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Hitch first appears in Middle English as the verb hicchen or hytchen, meaning to move jerkily, to shift with a sudden tug, or to hook something in place. Its earlier origins are uncertain, though it is generally treated as a native English formation, possibly related to words for a sharp pulling movement; for that reason scholars give it a cautious rather than a confident pedigree. The sense of fastening grew naturally from the idea of catching or hooking one thing onto another, which is why you hitch a trailer to a car or a horse to a post. From the notion of something catching or snagging came the figurative noun meaning a temporary obstacle or delay, as in a hitch in the plans. The casual sense of getting a free ride, the source of hitchhike, developed in the early twentieth century from the same image of hooking a lift from a passing vehicle. The spelling is straightforward and phonetic, with the only mild trap being the -tch cluster typical of short-vowel English words like catch and pitch.

How the word is built

• hitch (single Middle English root verb meaning to move with a jerk or fasten); no prefix or suffix