The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
CATHECT
Definition of CATHECT
verb
To focus one's emotional energies on someone or something.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Back-formation from cathexis and cathectic. A loan creation coined by British psychoanalyst James Strachey translating Freud’s German besetzen.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
8th
of 58 source languages in OUTLIER
3.1%
of traced words share this origin (899)
branch · 22.3% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, CATHECT · 2 relatives in the game
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
CATHECT in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 1 board so far.
It first turned up on Day 137, 4 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 8 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 137, 4 October 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
CATHECT starts with C and ends with T. Sorted, its letters read ACCEHTT - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. C and T appear more than once.
Words that start CATHEC
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found CATHECT?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 137 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER