Catch Me If You Can
1
4.1
- proper noun
:
Atrápame si puedes
- In Catch Me If You Can, Hanks plays an FBI agent pursuing a master con man (Leonardo DiCaprio) who lands on the bureau's most-wanted list.
Examples
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On Christmas Day, he'll open in Steven Spielberg's latest film, Catch Me If You Can.
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Last night I finally watched Catch Me If You Can and thought DiCaprio gave a brilliant performance.
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The professor showed a clip from Catch Me If You Can to illustrate confidence and deception.
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They planned a movie night and included Catch Me If You Can on the shortlist.
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Watch Catch Me If You Can!
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I just watched Catch Me If You Can last night.
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I saw a terrific show called Catch Me If You Can.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally transparent: a B1 learner who knows 'catch', 'me', 'if', 'you', and 'can' will read it as an imperative challenge meaning 'try to catch me if you are able' (i.e. attempt to capture or apprehend me). As a film title this literal sense remains intact rather than being idiomatic or metaphorically shifted, and similar conditional imperatives exist cross-linguistically, so the meaning is immediately derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Catch Me If You Can comes from a simple dare: someone running away might shout catch me if you can to tease a chaser and say 'try to catch me'. The movie uses this line as its title because it is about a long chase between a clever con man and the people who try to catch him.