A line or label in a document, newspaper, or manuscript identifying or describing the content that follows, or a brief caption.
From 'catch' + 'line,' combining the notion of a line that 'catches' the reader's attention with its identifying function. Historical publishing and journalism terminology.
Before headlines as we know them, newspapers used catchlines as organizational markers—they're still used in legal documents and scholarly works as headers that let you quickly 'catch' what section you're in. It's the ancestor of today's section labels.
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