Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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

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		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		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.