catchword
(ˈkætʃwɜːd)
[f. catch- 3 b + word.]
1. Printing. The first word of the following page inserted at the right-hand lower corner of each page of a book, below the last line. (Now rarely used.) Also in Manuscripts.
| 1730–6 in Bailey. 1755 Johnson, Catchword, with printers, the word at the corner of the page under the last line, which is repeated at the top of the next page. 1817 M. Edgeworth Love & L. iii. xxxvi. 22 In the last page..the catch-words at the bottom were Countess Christina. 1824 J. Johnson Typogr. I. 68 Catch-words, now generally abolished, were first used at Venice, by Vindeline de Spire. 1882 Grosart in Spenser's Wks. IV. 3/2 Catch-word is misprinted. 1885 E. M. Thompson in Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 144/2 Catch-words to connect the quires date back to the 12th century. 1957 N. R. Ker Catal. MSS. Anglo-Saxon p. xl, Some quires of..f. 245v have catchwords. |
2. A word so placed as to catch the eye or attention; spec. a. the word standing at the head of each article in a dictionary or the like; b. the rime word in verse; c. the last word in an actor's speech, serving as a guide to the next speaker; a cue.
| c 1780 C. Lloyd Rhyme (R.) More demands the critic ear Than the two catchwords in the rear Which stand like watchmen in the close To keep the verse from being prose. 1814 Jane Austen Mansf. Park I. xviii. 346 The others aspired at nothing beyond his remembering the catchword, and the first line of his speech. 1863 Reader 28 Nov. 638 A tick at the beginning and end of [the passage] and a line under the word show of what extent the passage is to be, and what the catchword is. 1868 C. Wordsworth in Spurgeon Treas. Dav. Ps. xxxiii. 1 This Psalm is coupled with the foregoing one by the catchword with which it opens. 1879 Directions to Readers for Dict., Put the word as a catchword at the upper corner of the slip. 1884 Athenæum 26 Jan. 124/2 The arranging of the slips collected..and the development of the various senses of every Catchword. 1885 Law Q. Rev. 297 The Digester should..revise every catch-word in the Reports. |
3. A word caught up and repeated, esp. in connexion with a political or other party. (Cf. catch-phrase under catch- 3 b.)
| 1795 Windham Speeches Parl. (1812) I. 259 The Influence and dangerous tendency of these party catch-words. 1812 Examiner 25 May 332/1 Public virtue is only the catch-word of knaves to delude fools. 1870 Lowell Study Wind. 106 Many of his phrases have become the catchwords of party politics. 1886 W. S. Lilly Europ. Hist. II. 229 His [the Abbé Fauchet's] catch-word [Fraternity]..has survived him..as the third article of the Revolutionary symbol. |
4. catchword entry (see quots.).
| 1893 in Funk's Stand. Dict. 1938 L. M. Harrod Librarians' Gloss. 35 Catchword entry, entry by some striking word in a book's title, other than the first, and likely to be remembered by an enquirer. 1956 F. C. Avis Bookman's Concise Dict. 54/1 Catchword Entry, an entry of the name of a book in a catalogue under its most important word, as Pickwick Papers. |