Other forms: hitching, hitched, hitches
To hitch is to fasten something with a knot or a hook. Hitch the trailer, hitch the horse to the rail, hitch it up.
It also means to raise with a jerk: hitch up your trousers. As a noun, a hitch is a knot used to fasten a rope to something — a clove hitch, a half hitch — and, quite separately, a small problem: without a hitch, a slight hitch. To hitch a lift is to hitchhike. Note get hitched, which is informal for getting married.
1verbhitchTo fasten something with a knot or hook.
“He hitched the horse to the cart and set off for market.”
2nounsmallA small problem.
“The whole thing went off without a hitch.”
hitch is a fastening or a snag.
Middle English hicchen is of unknown origin and appears in the fourteenth century. The knot sense, the jerking sense and the problem sense have never been fully sorted out from one another.
Middle English
hicchen
English, today
hitch
Built from
Probably from Middle English hicchen, hytchen, icchen (“to move; to move as with a jerk”), of obscure origin. Lacks cognates in other languages. Compare itch, hike.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA