Catch 22 Meaning. Catch-22 n from the title of Joseph Hellers 1961 novel. A situation in which any move that a person can make will lead to trouble.
The title of Joseph Hellers novel written in 1953 and published in 1961 properly titled Catch-22 - with a hyphen. A situation in which a person is frustrated by a paradoxical rule or set of circumstances that preclude any attempt to escape from them. This was coined by Joseph Heller in his 1961 novel Catch-22 which is set during WWII in Italy.
A set of circumstances in which one requirement etc is dependent upon another which is in turn dependent upon the first.
It stipulates that a soldiers request to be relieved from active duty can be accepted only if he is mentally unfit to fight. The first chapter was also published in a magazine in 1955 under the title Catch-18. A situation in which a person is frustrated by a paradoxical rule or set of circumstances that preclude any attempt to escape from them. 2 A contradictory or self-defeating course of action.
