Catch someone up

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Dec 12 16:10:33 UTC 2006


At 7:41 AM -0800 12/12/06, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Dec 12, 2006, at 6:59 AM, neil  crawford wrote:
>
>>I'm aware of losing teams playing catch-up rugby when they have to
>>be more
>>expansive and risk-taking.
>>
>>I'm also familiar with meeting someone to catch up on the latest news.
>>
>>But the following use is new to me. Is it a recent formulation?
>>
>>"And Jim? How is he?"
>>
>>"He's the best. He's wonderful, Alex." [...]
>>
>>"You'll catch me up on what he's doing."
>
>sounds perfectly ordinary to me, and i get 28,200 raw google webhits
>for "catch me up on".
>
>at least a few of these are from the UK, but it's possible that the
>construction is more common in the US.
>
>(there is, of course, a well-known UK/US difference in "catch up"
>expressions, the possibility of "catch you up" meaning 'catch up with
>you' in the UK, but not the US.  but that's a different construction.)
>
>arnold
>
...although still not quite as significant as the different
interpretations of "knock you up" on alternate sides of the Pond.

LH

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