Other forms: chasing, chased, chases
To chase is to run after somebody or something to catch them. The dog chased the ball. Police chased him across two gardens.
It also means to pursue something you want — chase a contract, chase a dream — and, very usefully in an office, to chase somebody means to remind them about something they owe you: I will chase them tomorrow. That sense is common in British working English and is polite. The noun is the pursuit itself: a car chase, give chase. Note cut to the chase, meaning get to the point, which comes from film editing.
1verbchaseTo run after somebody or something to catch them.
“The dog chased the cat up the tree.”
synonyms: pursue, run after
2verbremindTo remind somebody about something outstanding.
“I have chased them twice about the invoice.”
3nounactAn act of chasing.
“After a long chase through the streets, the police caught the thief.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
chase is a way of pursuing.
Old French chacier and Latin captare, to try to catch, are the ancestors — and the same Latin word gave English catch by a different route. Chase and catch are the same word arriving twice, one meaning the trying and one the succeeding.
Proto-Indo-European
*kap-
Latin
captō
Vulgar Latin
*captiāre
Old French
chacier
Anglo-Norman
chacer
Middle English
chacen
English, today
chase
From Middle English chacen, from Anglo-Norman chacer, Old French chacier, from Vulgar Latin captiāre, from Latin captō, frequentative of capiō. Compare French chasser (“to hunt”, “to chase”), Spanish cazar (“to hunt”), Portuguese caçar (“to hunt”) see Norwegian skysse (“to hunt”). a doublet of catch and related to capture. Displaced native Old English ōht, ēhtnes, and wāþ. Broadly overtook Old English huntaþ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA