Word.ws English Dictionary

caught napping

caught napping is the simple past and past participle of catch napping.

Meaning of catch napping

Verb

catch napping (third-person singular simple present catches napping, present participle catching napping, simple past and past participle caught napping)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To surprise; to take advantage of the lack of watchfulness of.
    • Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amid the cane, and the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride. If the Colonel Morales was to be caught at all he must be caught napping, and, as they knew, he usually...1907 January, Harold Bindloss, chapter 7, in The Dust of Conflict, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: McLeod & Allen, →OCLC

Questions about caught napping

What is caught napping the simple past and past participle of?
Caught napping is the simple past and past participle of catch napping.

Words near caught napping in the dictionary

  1. caught in the cookie jar
  2. caught it
  3. caught it in the neck
  4. caught lacking
  5. caught looking
  6. caught napping
  7. caught on
  8. caught on fire
  9. caught on the hop
  10. caught one's breath
  11. caught one's death

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caught napping (page history and authors); catch napping (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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