caught short

Compare French prendre de court.

• Audio (US):

  (file)

caught short (not comparable)

1. (British, euphemistic) Needing to use the toilet at a point where no toilet facilities are available.

   Synonym: taken short

   • 2009, Colin Cox, Short Hops Across the Atlantic, page 174:

     Some clever person came up with the apt name of little John (or big John for the optimist) for a suitably shaped container for those who were caught short.

2. (idiomatic, informal) unprepared or without enough of something when it is needed

• “caught short”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “caught short”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• The template Template:R:Partridge New/1/concise does not use the parameter(s):

  volume=concise

  Please see Module:checkparams for help with this warning.Eric Partridge (2007), “caught short”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 124.