An explanation of the different meanings of the English phrasal verb 'catch out', with lots of examples in context
Photo: Pexels
Hello and welcome to my website for English learners all about phrasal verbs where I explain their different meanings to help you understand, learn and use them.
The phrasal verb 'catch out' is an advanced level phrasal verb that is really great one to demonstrate and show off your English skills! In this post, I will explain 4 different meanings that it has from showing that someone has made an error to eliminating another player in a ball game. In addition, I will give you lots of examples of each one to help you to learn and use them in your English conversations. So, without further ado, let's make a start!
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CATCH OUT: KEY INFORMATION
Usage | Common |
Number of meanings | 4 |
Past tense forms | Caught out / Caught out |
Separable? | Yes |
Photo: Pexels
THE BASICS
Regular visitors to this site will know by now that I like to start my exploration of a phrasal verb by looking at the words that make it up and so to begin, we will cover the words 'catch' and 'out' and consider what they mean on their own.
The verb 'to catch' is a common irregular verb in English that is often heard in reference to intercepting objects and balls that are moving through the air with our hands. It is particularly common in sports, as we will see later. Aside from this reference, we can use the verb 'to catch' to talk about acquiring or obtaining things that are outside of our control such as diseases or people who are trying to escape from us. We also use to talk about getting on buses and trains. Moreover, if you catch someone doing something, it means that you find them taking part in an activity and if you catch what someone says, it means that you hear them.
I'll throw my keys to you, so get ready to catch them.
John is aiming to catch the 10.23 train tomorrow morning.
Helen wore her mask to prevent her colleagues from catching her cold.
The police caught the escaped criminal after an hour-long chase.
Lucy caught her husband kissing another woman.
Sorry, I didn't catch that. Please can you repeat it.
The prepositional particle 'out' is the direct opposite of the particle 'in' and is commonly used in English to refer to being in an external place or, as an adverb, moving towards the outside of something. It is a very busy little word and can function as an adverb, adjective and preposition and less commonly as a verb and noun. When used in phrasal verb constructions, 'out' can add the ideas of completion, removal, emergence and distribution, among other things.
So, now that we have covered the basics, let's move on to the meanings of the phrasal verb 'catch out'....
MEANING 1: To expose someone's deceit or error
Photo: Pexels
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Common |
Where is it used? | Mainly British English |
Potential synonyms | To find out, to catch, to reveal, to expose, to uncover, to nail |
Separable? | Yes |
You will have noticed in the picture above the word 'truth', which is particularly relevant for this first meaning of 'catch out' as this is 'to expose someone's error or deceit'.
At it's core, this first meaning is all about revealing the truth of a situation and that can come in different forms.
Before we continue, let me first explain the concept of deceit if this is a new word for you. The noun 'deceit' is the noun of the verb 'to deceive', which means to 'to lie to someone and mislead them into believing something that is not true'. So, to clarify, the noun 'deceit' is used to mean the action of lying to someone or deceiving them. A synonym of this word is 'deception'. |
Oftentimes, when a person is being deceived, it is not generally clear to them what is happening. They may be completely unaware of the deceit or they may develop some suspicions that the person is not being truthful with them over time. If the person being deceived can prove and reveal the other person is lying, we can say that they caught them out.
Simply put, if you catch someone out, you find them to be lying to you or deceiving you.
The detective was able to catch the criminal out when he noticed inconsistencies in his alibi.
Emily tried to cover her tracks, but her boss quickly caught her out when her story didn’t add up.
The teacher caught the student out when she claimed she’d read the book, but couldn’t answer basic questions about it.
The interviewer caught Jane out when she couldn’t remember details from her own CV (resume).
In addition to this, we can also use it to just refer to when we catch someone doing something wrong or something that they should not be doing. This could be anything from a teenager sneaking out of their home late at night to an employee in an office playing games on their computer rather than working.
The manager caught Roger out checking social media on his phone during work hours.
She caught her kids out sneaking chocolate from the cupboard after bedtime.
The teacher caught out two students passing notes during the test.
Simon caught his friend out taking money from his wallet without asking.
Security cameras caught her out taking office supplies home without permission.
On a grammatical note, as you may have noted from the examples given above, this is separable and we tend use this in a separable way most of the time, with the deceitful or naughty person being the direct object and going between the words 'catch' and 'out'. Note that if we are using a direct object pronoun (me, him, her), then this should always go in between 'catch' and 'out'.
MEANING 2: To trick someone into making a mistake
Photo: Pexels
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Mainly British English |
Potential synonyms | To trick, to expose, to trip up, to wrong-foot, to nail |
Separable? | Yes |
Our second meaning of 'catch out' is in fact a continuation of the first one that is mainly used in British English and means 'to trick someone into making a mistake'. In this meaning the deceiver becomes the deceived! It is definitely one for the detectives amongst you to use.
Firstly, if we think back to the previous section when we talked about catching people out by showing them to be liars or doing something wrong, we can now take this one step further by actively tricking the deceitful person in order to show and prove their deceit. While in the previous section, we talked about finding out that someone was lying in a more passive sense by catching them in the act, this time we are trying to actively prove that the person is lying.
Imagine the following example scenario...
You suspect a friend has lied to you about attending a concert recently. Instead of directly confronting them about the lies, you ask them, "Did they play your favourite song" and then you name a made-up song title. If they respond with, "Oh yeah, it was amazing!" you’ve caught them out by tricking them with a fake song title that doesn't actually exist.
The interviewer tried to catch the interviewee out with a tricky question about his past experience.
Lisa felt that her colleague was trying to catch her out by pretending to know less about the project than he actually did.
The lawyer skilfully caught the witness out by pointing out contradictions in her statements.
Journalists often try to catch out politicians by asking unexpected questions during live interviews.
Moving away from liars and dishonest people, we can also use this application of 'catch out' to refer to any situation in which someone wants to trick someone into making a mistake, usually in an unexpected way. This sounds quite sinister and can often be used for negative purposes such as in court cases, but it could equally be something quite innocent, such as playing games, practical jokes, quizzes and sports.
The interviewer caught me out with a question about a project I'd listed on my CV from five years ago. I could barely remember the details
Don't listen to what he's saying. He is trying to catch you out to make you make a mistake.
Some of the questions in the quiz are designed to catch you out. They look easy but they are not, so think carefully!
MEANING 3: To place someone in a difficult situation
Photo: Pexels
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To surprise, to catch unawares |
Separable? | Yes |
The third meaning of 'catch out' that we will cover in this post is 'to place someone in a difficult situation' and is used when the situation is completely unexpected or the person is not expecting or prepared for it at all.
As you can imagine from the above, this is used mainly to refer to undesirable situations in which a person finds themselves in by surprise.
On a grammatical level, as these are often situations in which bad and negative things happen to us, we tend to use the passive constructions 'be caught out' and 'get caught out' with this application.
Imagine a situation when you need to go the shop and as it is a nice day, you decide to walk there and back. On the way back from the shop however the weather changes and it suddenly starts raining heavily. As you had not expected this, you did not have an umbrella with you. You could then say that you were caught out by the rain because you unexpectedly found yourself in an unpleasant situation.
Other examples in which we could use this here include finding a hidden charge to pay on an invoice that you were not expecting, missing flights due to time zone changes when travelling and having stress at work due to deadlines on projects being moved closer to the date.
The forecast said sunny all day, but we got caught out by a sudden thunderstorm during our picnic.
The climbers on the mountain were caught out by snow as they were making their descent towards the bottom.
We got caught out by the public holiday - all the shops were closed and we had no food in the house.
Our team got caught out when the client moved the deadline forward by two weeks without warning.
MEANING 4: To dismiss a player from ball game
Photo: Pexels
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To dismiss, to eliminate |
Separable? | Yes |
Our fourth and final meaning of 'catch out' is one that will interest you if you enjoy playing or watching ball games as it means 'to dismiss a ball player from a game by catching the ball'.
This is one that you will hear being used specifically with the sport cricket (but it may also be used with baseball and softball), in which players have to bat (hit) the ball in order to score points. If a player on the opposite team then catches the ball that the batter has hit, the batter is immediately dismissed from the game, or in other words is out and can no longer participate.
The first England batsman was caught out after only one over.
The aim of the game is not to get caught out as that will mean instant dismissal.
The batsman got caught out playing across the line to a straight delivery.
Photo: Pexels
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THE END
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