Word.ws English Dictionary

caught short

caught short adjective: needing to use the toilet at a point where no toilet facilities are available.

Adjective

caught short (not comparable)

  1. (UK, euphemistic) Needing to use the toilet at a point where no toilet facilities are available.
    • Some clever person came up with the apt name of little John (or big John for the optimist) for a suitably shaped container for those who were caught short.2009, Colin Cox, Short Hops Across the Atlantic, page 174
    Synonyms:
    taken short
  2. (idiomatic, informal) unprepared or without enough of something when it is needed

Synonyms of caught short

Origin of caught short

Compare French prendre de court.

Questions about caught short

What does caught short mean?
Caught short means needing to use the toilet at a point where no toilet facilities are available.
What part of speech is caught short?
Caught short is an adjective.

Words near caught short in the dictionary

  1. caught one's death
  2. caught one's drift
  3. caught out
  4. caught raiding the cookie jar
  5. caught red-handed
  6. caught short
  7. caught sight of
  8. caught some rays
  9. caught some z's
  10. caught some zs
  11. caught someone at their own game

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: caught short (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-caught short.wav.

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