In this mini episode, you will learn the informal word “gotcha.”
Episode 443 of the Everybody ESL podcast is a mini episode that teaches you the informal word “gotcha.” Send your questions about English and your comments and suggestions to EverybodyESL@gmail.com. (And let me know if you’d like to record the introduction to a future episode.)
Intro
“Hi, everyone! This is Sumire, from Japan. And you are listening to Everybody ESL.”
Welcome to episode 443 of Everybody ESL, the podcast for everybody who wants to improve their English, practice their English, or just learn more English. My name is Ben, and I have a mini episode for you today, where I am going to teach you about one English topic. You can subscribe to the Everybody ESL podcast at Apple podcasts and wherever you find your podcasts. If you like Everybody ESL, leave it a good review so other people can find out about it too. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for me, please send an email to EverybodyESL@gmail.com. Okay! Let’s get on with this mini episode.
The episode
In this episode, I am going to teach you a very common and interesting word. The word is gotcha. Gotcha That’s g-o-t-c-h-a. Gotcha
What does this mean? Where does this word come from?
The word gotcha is a part of informal American English. It started as a contraction—that means a kind of shortening—of more than one word. It started as a contraction of “I got you.” I got you. Gotcha.
If you say those words quickly—and if you omit the I—you get something that can sound like “gotcha.”
What does it mean to say gotcha? When do we use this interesting informal word?
Gotcha has two different meanings. The first meaning of gotcha is “I understand you,” or “I understand what you are saying,” or “I understand what you are telling me about this situation.” “I understand this.”
It means that because the verb get can mean “to understand.” And sometimes in informal American English, we use the word got instead of get to mean “understand.” And so gotcha comes from “I got you.” In other words, “I understand you. I understand.”
Maybe you have heard someone say it like this: “I get it.” That’s a similar expression. I get it. It’s not a contraction like gotcha is, but it means the same thing. I get it. Gotcha.
I understand you, or I understand that.
The other meaning of gotcha is a little bit harder to define. We can also use gotcha to mean something like “I have trapped you,” or “I have caught you.” That’s because get can mean “to obtain,” or “to catch something.” And so this meaning of gotcha is something like “I caught you. I trapped you.”
For instance, if you catch somebody telling a lie or doing something wrong, you could say, “Aha! Gotcha.” In other words, “I have caught you doing this thing. I have found you when you were doing this thing. I know what you did. I caught you. I trapped you.”
Or maybe when we say "I gotcha" with this meaning, what we’re really saying is, “I have you.” Because we can use the word got, in American English, to mean “have.” You can use got to mean “have” in an informal way.
And so, maybe, gotcha means “I have you.” It is a contraction, again, for "got you." I gotcha. I have you.
Either way, it means the same thing: "I have you, I have caught you, I have trapped you." Maybe the idea is that it means “I have you now” because I caught you.
And that is gotcha, an interesting, informal word that I think you should know.
Outro
This is the end of episode 443 of Everybody ESL. Remember: If you have any questions about English, or if you have comments for me, or if you would like to record an introduction that I can play at the beginning of future episodes—the same way Sumire recorded the introduction you heard at the beginning of this episode—send an email to EverybodyESL@gmail.com. I’ll be back soon with a new episode. And until then, keep going, keep practicing, and keep learning. I’ll see you soon. Goodbye!