fair catch

1. 1.

   (American football) a catch of a punt on the fly by a defensive player who has signalled that he will not run and so should not be tackled

   Broadercatch

   American football

Questions about fair catch

What does fair catch mean?

fair catch means "(American football) a catch of a punt on the fly by a defensive player who has signalled that he will not run and so should not be tackled".

Is fair catch a common word?

fair catch is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.