catching
Meaning
(of a disease) likely to be transmitted from one person to another; infectious.
Attractive or captivating.
Structure
Usage
Be careful, that flu is very catching.
She has a catching enthusiasm that motivates the whole team.
The melody is simple but incredibly catching.
Etymology
The word 'catching' is built upon the verb 'catch', which has a long history of meaning "to capture or seize." Its journey begins with the Late Latin verb captiāre, an intensive form of capere (to take), which passed into Northern French dialects before entering Middle English. The addition of the '-ing' suffix, a productive Germanic participial ending, transforms the action of seizing into a descriptive quality. This grammatical shift allows the literal sense of "seizing" to evolve into the figurative meanings of a disease "seizing" new hosts (becoming infectious) or an idea or quality "seizing" one's attention (being attractive).
Analysis
- catch: From Middle English cacchen, from Anglo-Norman cachier, from Late Latin captiāre (to try to seize, to chase). Serves as the core verb root. - ing: A suffix of Germanic origin (Old English -ende, -ung) used to form present participles and adjectives from verbs. In this word, it forms an adjective.