Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to attach or fix oneself to, to join on, to catch hold of.

1885

1885

Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Sept. 18/2: ‘See that old girl,’ say the young-bloods, when she is now an old maid, ‘she wouldn’t “catch-on” to anyone before, and now there is no one who will come near enough to get hold of.’.

2. to understand, to become aware of.

1882

19001950

2000

1882		Chicago Trib. 16 Apr. 17/5: ‘Catch on, cully, she’s a daisy’.
1883		Bismarck (ND) Trib. 26 Jan. 8/1: The minister preached how vulgar it was to use slang [...] Just the minute I caught on to his racket, it broke me all up.
1890		Sacramento Dly Record-Union (CA) 26 July 3/4: Everybody ‘catches on’ and smiles or frowns. as each considers it a joke or put up job.
1891		A. Day Mysterious Beggar 212: That you could ‘catch on’ as you say. That you could ‘twig’.
1905		Marvel III:55 11: Yus; I think I catch on.
1911		Gem 16 Sept. 2: You catch on?
1921		Dos Passos Three Soldiers 399: You’re the only one that knows . . . you know what. You an’ that sergeant. Doan you say anythin’ so that the guys here kin ketch on, d’ye hear?
1934		Blanche Calloway ‘Catch On’ 🎵 Boys are boys, girls are girls, / But what kinds of boys are the ones that make curls? / You’ll catch on, / What it’s all about, / Oh, if you latch on / Brother, let me hear you shout! / When summer is here, / the farmers get gay, / They all make whoopie and hay-hay!
1946		D. Stivens Courtship of Uncle Henry 70: ‘Okay,’ I says. ‘I catch on. I’ll serve up the high hat talk.’.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 212: Word would have got around I was a homo. The clever boys that write book reviews [...] would have caught on and started giving me the build-up. Have to take care of their own, you know.
1960		E. De Roo Big Rumble 34: I thought you’d catch on. Can’t you dig it?
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 31: Catch on, Pally?
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 65: You can’t pull it too often, they catch on.
1997		Simon & Burns Corner (1998) 115: As fiends skirt out of the alley in twos and threes, the patrolman seems to catch on.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 140: Phil tells me you’re catching on.

3. to become popular, fashionable.

1884

189019001910

1914

1884		Times (Philadelphia, PA) 10 Mar. 4/1: We can’t tell what’ll catch on with the public.
1896		M. Williams Round London 159: Yes; Miss Scarborough had indeed ‘caught on’.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Dec. 26/2: Which, though an excellent suggestion, seems hardly likely to ‘catch on’ with the gilded M.C.C. of England, whose permission is necessary before it becomes a cricket statute.
1911		Alaska Citizen 28 Aug. 7/2: She was a nice girl, but she despaired of catching on at home.
1914		Bulletin (Sydney) 23 July 34/2: It is the ideal of luxurious, easy travelling, but somehow it has not caught on outside England and the U.S.A.