fish
/fɪʃ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms fishes fishing fished the Fish
- noun (countable) A typically cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gills; any vertebrate that is not a tetrapod. “Salmon is a fish.”
- noun (cladistically) Any vertebrate, including tetrapods.
- noun (archaic or loosely) Any animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.
- noun Now used in combination: (e.g., starfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish, etc).
- noun (Newfoundland) Cod; codfish.
- noun (uncountable) The flesh of the fish used as food. “The seafood pasta had lots of fish but not enough pasta.”
- noun (Roman Catholicism) An aquatic or semiaquatic animal suitable for consumption during fasting on Fridays during Lent.
- noun (uncountable) A card game in which the object is to obtain cards in pairs or sets of four (depending on the variation), by asking the other players for cards of a particular rank.
- noun A period of time spent fishing. “The fish at the lake didn't prove successful.”
- noun An instance of seeking something. “Merely two fishes for information told the whole story.”
- verb (intransitive, transitive) To hunt fish or other aquatic animals in a body of water, or to collect coral or pearls from the bottom of the sea. “We went fishing for crabs by the pier.”
- verb (transitive) To search (a body of water) for something other than fish. “They fished the surrounding lakes for the dead body.”
- verb (fishing, transitive) To use as bait when fishing.
- verb (intransitive) To (attempt to) find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects. “Why are you fishing through my things?”
- verb (intransitive, followed by "for" or "around for") To talk to people in an attempt to get them to say something, or seek to obtain something by artifice. “The detective visited the local pubs fishing around for more information.”
- verb (intransitive, cricket) Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.
- verb (nautical, transitive) To repair (a spar or mast) by fastening a beam or other long object (often called a fish) over the damaged part (see Noun above).
- verb (nautical, transitive) To hoist the flukes of.
- noun (obsolete) A counter, used in various games.
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Go Fish mark donkey donk rummage rifle angle drop in a line Fishes Pisces Pisces the Fishes
Etymology
From Middle English fisch, from Old English fisċ (“fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *fisk, from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz (“fish”), from Proto-Indo-European *piskós (“fish”).
Cognate with Yola wish (“fish”), North Frisian fasch, fask, Fesk (“fish”), Saterland Frisian Fisk (“fish”), West Frisian fisk (“fish”), Cimbrian biss, visch, viss (“fish”), Dutch vis (“fish”), Dutch Low Saxon and Mòcheno visch (“fish”), German Fisch (“fish”), German Low German Fösch (“fish”), Luxembourgish Fësch (“fish”), Yiddish פֿיש (fish, “fish”), Danish, Elfdalian, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish fisk (“fish”), Faroese and Icelandic fiskur (“fish”), Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍃 (fisks, “fish”), Crimean Gothic fisct (“fish”). Compare Irish iasc (“fish”), Latin piscis (“fish”).
Deverbal from to fish (etymology 3).
From Old English fiscian, from Proto-West Germanic *fiskōn, from Proto-Germanic *fiskōną.
Cognate with Saterland Frisian fiskje (“to fish”), Dutch vissen (“to fish”), German fischen (“to fish”), Limburgish vésche, vèsse (“to fish”), Luxembourgish fëschen (“to fish”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk fiske (“to fish”), Faroese, Icelandic and Swedish fiska (“to fish”), Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐍃𐌺𐍉𐌽 (fiskōn, “to fish”).
Borrowed from French fiche (“peg, mark”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A counter, used in various games.
- noun A name loosely applied in popular usage to many animals of diverse characteristics, living in the water.
- noun An oviparous, vertebrate animal usually having fins and a covering scales or plates. It breathes by means of gills, and lives almost entirely in the water. See Pisces.
- verb To attempt to catch fish; to be employed in taking fish, by any means, as by angling or drawing a net.
Etymology [F. fiche peg, mark, fr. fisher to fix.]
Etymology [OE. fisch, fisc, fis, AS. fisc; akin to D. visch, OS. & OHG. fisk, G. fisch, Icel. fiskr, Sw. & Dan. fisk, Goth. fisks, L. piscis, Ir. iasg. Cf. Piscatorial. In some cases, such as fish joint, fish plate, this word has prob. been confused with fish, fr. F. fichea peg.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “fish”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details