From Middle English catche, from cacchen (“to catch”). For the modern form with /ɛ/, compare the pronunciation /kɛtʃ/ of catch.
Meanings
A fore-and-aft rigged sailing vessel with two masts, main and mizzen, the mizzen being stepped forward of the rudder post.
[…] to finish her new Habit or Appearance, and make her Change compleat, he ordered her Sails to be alter’d; and as she sailed before with a Half-Sprit, like a Yacht, she sailed now with square Sail and Mizen Mast, like a Ketch; so that, in a Word, she was a perfect Cheat […] 1720, Daniel Defoe, Captain Singleton, London: J. Brotherton et al, page 313:
Wot is it, lambs, as they ketches in seas, rivers, lakes, and ponds? 1864 May – 1865 November, Charles Dickens, chapter XV, in Our Mutual Friend. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1865, →OCLC, 4th book (A Turning), page 287:
You'll never ketch me hollerin' at no Republican gatherin'. 1916, W. O. BRADLEY, Stories & Speeches, section 18:
Run, nigger, run, de patrollers will ketch you. 1968 S. STUCKEY, in A. Chapman, New Black Voices (1972), page 445
You heard about that joke a dollar down and a dollar when you ketch me? 1967 Apr, Atlantic Monthly, 103/1:
You'll ketch your death. The fire's out long ago. 1911 October, Edith Wharton, chapter II, in Ethan Frome (The Scribner Library; SL8), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 60:
If so you gonna ketch hell. 1929, H. W. ODUM, in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973), page 184
I guess, he is trying to ketch mebut it won't du. I'm tu old a bird to be ketch'd with chaff. 1815, D. HUMPHREYS, Yankey in England, I. 21:
[…] I got to go to church and sweat and sweat—I hate them ornery sermons! I can’t ketch a fly in there, I can’t chaw, I got to wear shoes all Sunday. 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 270: