Definition of "ketch"

[…] to finish her new Habit or Appearance, and make her Change compleat, he ordered her Sails to be alter’d; and as she sailed before with a Half-Sprit, like a Yacht, she sailed now with square Sail and Mizen Mast, like a Ketch; so that, in a Word, she was a perfect Cheat […]

1720, Daniel Defoe, Captain Singleton‎, London: J. Brotherton et al, page 313

I guess, he is trying to ketch mebut it won't du. I'm tu old a bird to be ketch'd with chaff.

1815, D. HUMPHREYS, Yankey in England, I. 21

Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds?

1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter XV, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, book the fourth (A Turning), page 287

[…] I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons! I can’t ketch a fly in there, I can’t chaw, I got to wear shoes all Sunday.

1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, page 270

You'll ketch your death. The fire's out long ago.

1911 October, Edith Wharton, chapter II, in Ethan Frome (The Scribner Library; SL8), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 60

You'll never ketch me hollerin' at no Republican gatherin'.

1916, W. O. BRADLEY, Stories & Speeches, section 18

If so you gonna ketch hell.

1929, H. W. ODUM, in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973), page 184

You heard about that joke a dollar down and a dollar when you ketch me?

1967 Apr, Atlantic Monthly, 103/1

Run, nigger, run, de patrollers will ketch you.

1968 S. STUCKEY, in A. Chapman, New Black Voices (1972), page 445

'Squire Ketch rejoices as much to hear of a new Vox, as an old Sexton does to hear of a new Delight.

1681, T. FLATMAN Heraclitus Ridens No. 14

Well! If he has a mind to be Ketch'd, speed him say I.

n.d., Ibid;;. No. 18

Ignorant of many of the secrets of ketchcraft.

1840, Fraser's Mag., number XXI, page 210

I'll ketch you; I'll hang you.

1859, MATSELL Vocab. s.v. (Farmer)