catchy

catchy adj Pronc-sp ketchy

1 Of weather: changeable, intermittently rainy. [OED3 catchy adj. 1 1784→; cf catching] chiefly Nth, N Midl

1840 Farmers’ Cabinet 5.165 sePA, They have been known in a few instances, when the weather was pretty catchy in hay-time, to go an hour beyond the above. 1858 Weekly N. IA Times (McGregor) 4 Aug [2]/4, We would not advise the farmers therabouts to neglect their wheat in this “catchy weather” for all the promises which this discovery holds out. 1885 VT Jrl. (Windsor) 11 July 5/1, Farmers have had rather a “ketchy” time thus far for haying. 1888 Ottawa Daily Republican (KS) 22 Aug [2]/4, This is rather “catchy” weather for hay-makers. 1894 DN 1.331 NJ, Ketchy: changeable (weather). 1896 Mower Co. Transcript (Austin MN) 22 Apr [6]/2, Catchy weather for seeding. 1903 DN 2.293 seMA, Catchy. . . Uncertain, liable to sudden changes, said of weather. 1908 Bellingham Herald (WA) 7 Sept 6/4, Asphalt laid in the mid-summer months gives more durability than if laid earlier in the “catchy” weather of May or early June. 1912 DN 3.580 wIN, Ketchy weather. . . Weather in which there may be sudden rainstorms (on hay). “We’ll not begin on that field to-day; it’s pretty ketchy weather.” 1936 AmSp 11.315 Ozarks, ‘Th’ weather’s kind o’ ketchy’ means that it is unsettled, with an uncertain prospect of rain. 1940–41 Cassidy WI Atlas cWI, Showers and sun alternating is ketchy weather. 1946 PADS 5.27 VA, Ketchy . . : Of the weather, stormy; used among older people, rare. 1959 VT Hist. new ser 27.129, Catchy. . .. Changeable. 1985 Rutland Daily Herald (VT) 28 June 18/3, Now, farmers have fought the weather for generations. . . From the days we turned hay and shook out the green wet chunks with pitchforks when I was a boy to today when many farmers mow one day and put up haylage the next even with “catchy” hay weather.

[. . .]