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.)
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. Mar. 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.
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 rhyme 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.
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 connection 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, 24 May, 332/1. Public virtue is only the catchword 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.
