hard to catch
9
5.0
- idiom
:
difícil de atrapar
- This makes them less vulnerable to fishing pressure and particularly hard to catch on an industrial scale.
- so hard to catch
- very hard to catch
- too hard to catch
Examples
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Now, this kind of criminal is very hard to catch, David.
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It's hard to catch your own mistakes.
Blog text (22) -
A mink is hard to catch.
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It happens so fast it can be hard to catch.
Blog text (2) -
Graffiti vandals are hard to catch.
Blog text (9) -
In the Weitchpec and Orleans stretches of the Klamath River, the salmon are seen, but hard to catch.
Blog text (18) -
The cunning thief was hard to catch, as he always knew how to evade the police.
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With their quick movements, the rabbits are hard to catch in the wild.
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The experienced hacker proved hard to catch, easily slipping through the security measures.
Synonyms
∞
2.6
Hard to do or understand and needing a lot of effort
43
7.0
Hard to find or catch, like an animal that avoids people
How Hard
9
5.0
1
2.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'hard to catch' is directly compositional: 'hard' (difficult) + the infinitival 'to catch' yields 'difficult to catch', a meaning that follows a common English grammatical pattern ('hard to + verb'). This construction is regular and cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Hard to catch paints the image of an animal or person that slips away so you cannot catch them, like a quick cat that hides in the garden. So, the phrase now means 'difficult to catch', 'hard to understand', or 'hard to defeat'.