▪ I. ketch, n.1 Naut.
(kɛtʃ)
[Later form of cache, catch n.2, with e for a as in keg, kennel, kestrel, etc.]
A strongly-built two-masted vessel, usually from 100 to 250 tons burden, formerly much used as a bomb-vessel (see bomb-ketch); now a similarly rigged small coasting vessel.
| [1481 —: see catch n.2] 1655 Cromwell Let. 13 June in Carlyle, Those [dispatches] which were sent by a ketch immediately from hence. 1665 Lond. Gaz. No. 3/4 Thursday last the Drake Friggot, and a Ketch with Goods,..were put back by the storms. 1720 De Foe Capt. Singleton xviii. (1840) 315 She sailed..with square sail and mizen⁓mast, like a ketch. 1876 T. Hardy Ethelberta II. 44 Outside these lay the tanned sails of a ketch or smack. |
b. attrib. and Comb., as ketch fashion, ketch rig; ketch-rigged adj.
| 1819 Rees Cycl. s.v., At present only a few coasting vessels are rigged ketch fashion. 1845 Nicolas Disp. Nelson II. 177 La Vierge de Consolation, one hundred and twenty tons, ketch-rigged. 1891 Daily News 13 Feb. 3/5 Some twelve thousand square feet of sail spread in what is known as the ‘Salcombe ketch rig’. |
▪ II. ketch, n.2
[See Jack Ketch.]
The hangman. Hence ketch v.1 trans., to hang; ketchcraft, the hangman's craft.
| 1681 T. Flatman Heraclitus Ridens No. 14 'Squire Ketch rejoices as much to hear of a new Vox, as an old Sexton does to hear of a new Delight. Ibid. No. 18 Well! If he has a mind to be Ketch'd, speed him say I. 1706 Wooden World Diss. (1708) 80 For a running Noose, this new Ketch is but a Fool to him. 1840 Fraser's Mag. XXI. 210 Ignorant of many of the secrets of ketchcraft. 1859 Matsell Vocab. s.v. (Farmer), I'll ketch you; I'll hang you. |
▪ III. ketch, v.2
(kɛtʃ)
Dial. var. (pa. tense ketched) of catch v.
| 1815 D. Humphreys Yankey in England i. 21, I guess, he is trying to ketch me—but it won't du. I'm tu old a bird to be ketch'd with chaff. 1865 Dickens Mut. Fr. II. iv. xv. 287 Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds? a 1883 [see knuck 2]. 1911 E. Wharton Ethan Frome ii. 60 You'll ketch your death. The fire's out long ago. 1916 W. O. Bradley Stories & Speeches 18 You'll never ketch me hollerin' at no Republican gatherin'. 1929 H. W. Odum in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 184 If so you gonna ketch hell. 1967 Atlantic Monthly Apr. 103/1 You heard about that joke a dollar down and a dollar when you ketch me? 1968 S. Stuckey in A. Chapman New Black Voices (1972) 445 Run, nigger, run, de patrollers will ketch you. |
▪ IV. ketch
var. catch n.1; obs. f. keach v.