catcheen.
/ˌkaˈtʃiː/, U.S. /ˌkɛˈtʃi/, /ˌkæˈtʃi/ A person who is caught (in various senses of catch v.). Paired or contrasted with catcher n. 2a.In quot. 1839 in a story in which Neptune catches the god Oceanus, pulling him from the waters of Plymouth Sound.
ΚΠ
1839 Fraser's Mag. Sept. 339 It was..an uncomfortable ‘catch’; the old god himself being the catchee, instead of the catcher.
1886 Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Sentinel 12 Feb. 4/2 The principle of putting a thief to catch a thief has been tried in other circumstances, but..there is always danger of a coalition among the catcher and the catchee.
1913 Dial 16 Oct. 293/1 Is there any certain recipe for contemporary reputation? Catching on to coat-tails is..as valuable for the catchee as for the catcher.
1981 L. Greenslit in W. W. Hiltner & K. W. Haley Greenslit Family viii. 214 It was the duty of the ‘catcher’ to plant a kiss on the lips of the ‘catchee’.
2013 T. Leonard Branded by Callahan xvii. 195 No woman likes to feel that she's tying a man down. We like to be the catchee, not the catcher.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2018; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1839