Catch-'em-alive-o
noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A live-trap (trap designed to catch animals without killing them). obsolete, slang
"1855-1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like Neptune’s, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"1855-1857, Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit There were views, like and unlike, of a multitude of places; and there was one little picture-room devoted to a few of the regular sticky old Saints, with sinews like whipcord, hair like Neptune’s, wrinkles like tattooing, and such coats of varnish that every holy personage served for a fly-trap, and became what is now called in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive O."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.