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Glite Dictionary
🏃 To reach someone 📚 To finish missed tasks
to catch up with

to catch up with

28 3.2
To do work you missed after being away to reach the same level as others
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : ponerse al día (con)
  • She took extra notes to catch up with the material covered during her absence.
  • finally caught up with
  • catch up with others

So I had to basically start from scratch and learn an entire new industry and play catch up with all the Stanford, Harvard MBAs.

Examples

  • And I promise to get caught up with my classes, sir.

    Coach Carter (2005)

  • And she never did seem to catch up with her own class in school.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • I had been meaning to catch up with her, to call her.

    Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)

  • Sit down and let your breath catch up with you.

    Unconquered (1947)

  • My mistakes have caught up with me, and now I need to deal with myself.

    Dinner (2016)

  • At Baylor, he says he will try to catch up with tasks that have gotten away from him.

    Academic text (2016)

  • Dean spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to catch up with his backlog of work.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Eric: Well, I'm going to catch up with the schoolwork I missed.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • "I've got to catch up with work," Laurie said with a half laugh.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • There'll always be deadlines to catch up with and pressures to handle.

Synonyms

to catch up
vsto catch up with
389 2.7

To reach the same level as others after falling behind

focuses on doing missed tasks after an absence to reach others' level
to make up
vsto catch up with
252 2.8

Do work you missed to catch up

focuses specifically on completing missed work to reach the same level

How Up-to-Date

to get ahead
83 3.4
to catch up with
28 3.2
to lag
24 3.0

Surface Forms

catch up with infinitive
catching up with present participle
catches up with third person singular
caught up with past
caught up with past participle

Morphology

catch + up + with

A learner who knows 'catch' (to reach), 'up' (to a higher/complete state) and 'with' (together/alongside) can plausibly infer the core idea of 'reaching the same level' or 'bringing oneself alongside others. 'However, the extension to doing missed work and the grammaticalised particle meaning of 'up' in phrasal verbs is somewhat metaphorical and variable, so full comprehension often requires prior exposure or context.

Etymology

Catch up with also has a second meaning based on the same image: if you are behind on work you try to catch those who are up ahead so you are 'with' them again. That's why it means 'to do missed work to reach the same level'.