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CATCH

Volume 3 · 73 words · 1778 Edition

in the musical sense of the word, a fugue in the union, wherein, to humour some conceit in the words, the melody is broken, and the sense interrupted in one part, and caught again or supported by another; as in the catch in Shakespeare's play of the twelfth-night, where there is a catch sung by three persons, in which the humour is, that each who sings, calls and is called knave in turn.