I substituted for an English class today. One of the exercises was to describe the meanings of idioms, for example, “see eye to eye” and “nose to the grindstone.”
One of the idioms was “catch a cold.” Does anyone know how to use “catch a cold” as an idiom? I only know the literal meaning:
catch: to become subject to or to contract, as by exposure to a pathogen
cold: a viral infection characterized by inflammation of the mucous membranes lining the upper respiratory passages and usually accompanied by malaise, fever, chills, coughing, and sneezing
It’s more of a metaphor than a full idiom, and its well on its way to becoming a ‘dead metaphor’ – one that’s so basic to the language we have trouble thinking of it as a metaphor (the fact that your dictionary glossed one sense of “catch” as disease-related is good evidence of that).
Literally you can’t catch a cold the way you’d catch a baseball (if anything, it feels more like the cold catches you). If the dictionary did not list the disease-version, it might be a lot more obvious that you interpret the word “catch” differently when it occurs right before the name of a disease than when it occurs elsewhere.
The most “idiomy” idioms are ones in which knowing the meanings of all the words doesn’t tell you anything about what they mean in that combiniation, e.g. “three sheets to the wind.”
I would just add that the OED attests “catching cold” as originally meaning “becoming chilled,” then later the meaning evolved to that as described in the OP.
Can you tell me when the OED first lists “catch” being used to mean “to become subject to or to contract, as by exposure to a pathogen” and “to become affected by or infused with”? Also, when was “catch” first used to mean “to capture”? Was “catch” ever used to mean “chase”?
I’m assuming a distinction between an idiom and a metaphor – this is the kind of question where it’s easy to get caught up (no pun intended) in definitional issues. In my own, er, jargonspace, I use “idiom” specifically for sequences whose meaning can’t be inferred from the meaning of the parts. By that measure, “to catch a cold” isn’t an idiom, esp. since you can catch any number of other diseases. If I know the metaphorical sense of “catch” and I know the disease-meaning of “cold,” I can figure out what “catch a cold” means.
However, I also know that there are various definitions of “idiom,” hence my hedging and referring to things like “three sheets to the wind” simply as a very idiomy idiom. I can only guess that the school materials the OP mentioned were using a very broad definition of “idiom.” Given a definition, you can frequently establish whether something fits it or not – but the problem of which definition to accept is one of the classic sources of arguments that never end.
No. “Catching cold” in the original sense I cited dates to 1591. My version (which is almost a century old) does not give a date as to when to the meaning evolved to your (and the current) definition.
There’s a common saying in economics: When the US sneezes, the whole worlds catches a cold. Meaning that a hiccup in the US economy can drastically effect other economies in the world. Not quite so true these days, but still well known.