catch weight

Noun

catchweight (countable and uncountable, plural catchweights)

1. A weight category other than the standard weight categories: either an agreed-upon weight range or an agreement to allow any weight.
   • There was an especially good entry, thirty-nine horses, representing twenty-two regiments, being entered in the Light Weight race, which was for horses five years old and upwards, the property of oflicers on full or half pay of the Regular Army, that had not won a race under the recognised rules of...1908, Cavalry Journal - Volume 3, page 266
2. The weight of an item that is not set to a standard, but which varies around an approximate value.
   • Catchweights over 300 pounds would be about the correctest figure to give for ladies of the royal family ; and the women-folk generally are big-faced and big-bodied, though not especially large-limbed.1892, C. R. Sail, Farthest East, and South and West
3. The weight of all the fish caught.
   • At the end of two hours, the first seventeen anglers up the line from me had taken a total of only three legal fish, which suggested I wasn't ... Carr told me the quantitative specialist wins an occasional match with the biggest total catchweight.1977, Robert G. Deindorfer, The incompleat angler: fishing Izaak Walton's favorite rivers, page 58

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