to catch up
166
2.3
- phrasal verb
- /kæʧ ʌp/
- Informal
:
ponerse al día (con alguien)
- It's been a while since we last spoke; let's catch up and share what's new in our lives.
So the conversation shifts to Suzanne kind of catching up with her a little bit.
- So the conversation shifts to Suzanne kind of catching up with her a little bit.
- And we can just just throw down, catch up, talk shit, bust each other's balls.
- He's like, oh, man, let's let's, you know, catch up and we'll go out and stuff like that.
- You guys should grab coffee just to catch up, see what they're up to.
- She's like, hey, Shalab, Congrats on the new job, we should catch up.
Examples
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I want to catch up.
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No, I'll catch up with you later.
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- We should catch up soon.
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Well, let me just catch you up and explain what's going on, I guess.
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Hi, looking very different from the the last clip, but I need to catch you up on the last couple of days.
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I'm glad we had this little chat, really nice to catch up.
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Hello from Coffee, me and Jenny are catching up for the first time in so long.
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Oh, we didn't really get a chance to catch up much.
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It's just a couple of Navy buddies catching up on old times.
Fiction book (1992) -
It was so nice catching up with you.
Synonyms
155
2.3
Contact someone after not talking for a while
14
3.5
To make brief contact to give or get an update
How Chatty
Surface Forms
Morphology
catch + up
The meaning 'to talk to someone after a period of time to exchange news' is not directly derivable from the literal senses of 'catch' (to seize) and 'up' (direction), since it describes a conversational/temporal activity rather than a physical action. It is partially motivated—the idea of 'bringing someone up to date' or 'reaching the same point' connects to the constituents and many languages have similar idioms—so learners may sometimes infer it but it is not fully predictable.
Etymology
Catch up paints a scene of friends meeting and sharing stories: one person 'catches' the other's news and brings each other up to date. So, catch up means 'to talk with someone and exchange news after not seeing them for a while'.