Something eye-catching makes you look, even if you did not plan to. The colour is strong, the shape is new, or it simply stands out from everything around it. A yellow bag on a grey train, a shop sign with huge bright letters, a dress that shines under the lights — those are eye-catching. People say it about clothes, posters, rooms, and sometimes about a person dressed in a way you cannot miss. It is warm, everyday English, not a stiff school-report word. Though actually, eye-catching is not the same as beautiful. You can notice a thing because it is loud or strange, not because it is pretty. Advertisements want to be eye-catching on purpose: they are trying to catch your eye, the way a hand catches a ball.