Caught is the past tense of catch, meaning you successfully grabbed, trapped, or intercepted something that was moving. When a baseball player catches a fly ball, they've caught it. When you finally grab your runaway dog after chasing him around the yard, you've caught him.

The word also means being discovered doing something you shouldn't. If you sneak an extra cookie before dinner and your mom walks in, you've been caught. When a student is caught breaking the rules during a test, a teacher sees them doing it. Being caught usually means facing consequences, whether it's returning the cookie or accepting a zero on the test.

You can also be caught in a situation you didn't plan for. Someone might get caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella, or caught in traffic on the way to school. In these cases, you're stuck in circumstances beyond your control.

Sometimes caught describes understanding something. When you suddenly get a joke everyone else laughed at five minutes ago, you might say, “I just caught that!” Your brain has finally intercepted the meaning.