A sudden, sharp decline is also called a ‘falling knife’, particularly due to how it looks in a box plot, somewhat resembling a bloody dagger.

So… when the market in general tries to ‘catch’ a ‘falling knife’… this produces a ‘dead cat bounce’ if the market at least temporarily makes the price actually rebound a bit.

So… to … mix terminology… I guess you catch a falling knife by bouncing a cat off the floor, which goes upward, catches the knife, kills the cat, and then the dead cat with the knife in it collapses through the broken floor.

Hooray daytrader terminology.