fish
Meanings
- A typically cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gill; any vertebrate that is not a tetrapod.
- Any vertebrate, including tetrapods.
- Any animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.
- Now used in combination: (e.g., starfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish, etc).
- Cod; codfish.
- The flesh of the fish used as food.
- An aquatic or semiaquatic animal suitable for consumption during fasting on Fridays during Lent.
- 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.
- An easy victim for swindling.
- A bad poker player. Compare shark (a good poker player).
- A makeshift overlapping longitudinal brace, originally shaped roughly like a fish, used to temporarily repair or extend a spar or mast of a ship.
- A purchase used to fish the anchor.
- A period of time spent fishing.
- An instance of seeking something.
- To hunt fish or other aquatic animals in a body of water, or to collect coral or pearls from the bottom of the sea.
- To search (a body of water) for something other than fish.
- To use as bait when fishing.
- To (attempt to) find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects.
- To talk to people in an attempt to get them to say something, or seek to obtain something by artifice.
- Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.
- 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).
- To hoist the flukes of.
- To draw or guide (a wire or cable) by means of fish tape.
- A counter, used in various games.
- Acronym of fluorescent in situ hybridization, a molecular cytogenetic technique used to identify whether a DNA sample has a specific sequence.
- A surname.
- The constellation and zodiacal sign Pisces.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
From Middle English fisch, from Old English fisċ (“fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *fisk, from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz (“fish”), from Proto-Indo-European *peysk- (“fish”). Cognates 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, visch (“fish”), Dutch Low Saxon, 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”).