Other forms: intercepted, intercepting, intercepts
To intercept something is to catch it on the way, before it reaches where it was going. The defender intercepts the pass, a missile intercepts another missile, a colleague intercepts you in the corridor before you get to the lift.
Two worlds use the word hardest. In sport an intercepted pass becomes an interception, and in American football that is the word every commentator shouts. In spying and policing it covers messages and cargo: intercepted emails, intercepted radio traffic, a shipment intercepted at the border. The everyday noun is interception, while intercept as a noun stays technical, meaning a captured signal in intelligence work and the point where a line crosses an axis in maths. Remember what actually gets intercepted: the thing travelling, not the person who sent it.
1verbinterceptTo stop or catch something as it moves from one place to another.
“Coastguards intercepted the boat ten miles out.”
2verbballTo catch a ball that was meant for someone else.
“He intercepted the pass and ran the length of the pitch.”
3verbsecretlyTo secretly listen to or read a message not meant for you.
“The emails were intercepted months before the arrest.”
4nouncaptured(technical) a captured signal, or the point where a line crosses an axis.
“The y-intercept tells you where the line meets the vertical axis.”
Borrowed from Latin interceptum, the past participle of intercipio, to take something in between. The old root underneath means to seize, so an interception is a seizing that happens halfway, between the sending and the arriving.
Proto-Indo-European
*keh₂p-
Latin
interceptum
English, today
intercept
Borrowed from Latin interceptum, past participle of intercipiō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA