Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rare, humorous Alternative spelling of fish.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Though frequently reported to be a coinage of George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), this term dates back to at least 1855.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word ghoti.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Wikipedia has a terribly interesting article on this word.

    December 13, 2006

  • Robin: "Ghoti" is "fish"?

    Batman: See here. English phonetics. GH becomes F, as in "tough" or "laugh". O becomes I as in "women". TI becomes SH as in "ration" or the word "nation".

    Robin: Holy semantics, Batman. You never cease to amaze me!

    May 24, 2007

  • From Barry Rudd, not Batman and Robin. Let's give credit where credit is due.

    If you haven't read "The Child Buyer," go check it out immediately.

    October 4, 2007

  • On my list. The title alone is intriguing. :-)

    October 4, 2007

  • Should be required reading for any linguist. Or educator.

    October 4, 2007

  • There is also Phtholognyrrh pronounced: Turner, According to a Mr. Turner who insisted on signing his name that way according to Robert M. Rennick in I Didn't Catch Your Name, Verbatim® Vol. XXix, No2. Mr Turner explains: " Look, the phth is like phthisic, which is pronounced t; olo is like colonel, which is pronounced ur; gn as in gnat is pronounced n; and yrrh as in myrrh, is pronounced er. So you have Turner. Nothing could be simpler." Reader's Digest, Jan . 1941, p. 42

    September 1, 2008

  • In Jr. High my friends and I were avid fans of a band called Ghoti Hook. Because of that band I knew the meaning of this word as a 14 year old. HA!

    July 17, 2009

  • A constructed word used to illustrate irregularities in English spelling. It is pronounced 'fish' - gh as in tough. o as in women. ti as in nation.

    August 15, 2009

  • Gone ghotion.

    November 15, 2010

  • The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, is said to have joked that the word ‘fish’ could legitimately be spelled ‘ghoti’ by using the ‘gh’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘enough’, the ‘o’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘women’ and the ‘ti’ sound as it is pronounced in ‘action’.

    However, linguists have pointed out that the location of the letters in the constructed word is inconsistent with how those letters would be pronounced in those placements, and that the expected pronunciation in English would be "goaty".1 For instance, the letters "gh" cannot be pronounced /f/ at the beginning of a syllable, and the letters "ti" cannot be pronounced /ʃ/ at the end of a syllable.

    January 3, 2016

  • I wrote about this 4 years ago, with some bonus discussion of minims and Churchillian Drift thrown in: http://tankhughes.com/?p=727

    January 4, 2016