catch on
Britishverb
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to become popular or fashionable
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to grasp mentally; understand
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Understand, as in Aunt Mary doesn't catch on to any jokes . The verb to catch alone was used with this meaning from Shakespeare's time, on being added in the late 1800s. Also see get it , def. 2.
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Become popular, as in This new dance is really beginning to catch on . [Late 1800s]
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Investors might want to take advantage of what technical signals suggest is a longer-term trend, before the rest of the market catches on.
From Barron's
Last weekend, a 12-year-old girl was caught on video dangling from a Mammoth ski lift dozens of feet above the ground.
From Los Angeles Times
"If you said, 'I love doing the laundry,'" Sam explained, "that would be code, and it would really mean—" He waited for his mother to catch on.
From Literature
But even if these other applications catch on, Saluzzi said, there is no reason to expect their adoption would be a boon for bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
From MarketWatch
Rory was devastated when his dad took his last chicken nugget at a home game of their beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers - and his despair was caught on the stadium's big screen.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
