Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of numerous cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates characteristically having fins, gills, and a streamlined body and including the bony fishes, such as catfishes and tunas, and the cartilaginous fishes, such as sharks and rays.
  • noun Any of various jawless aquatic craniates, including the lampreys and hagfishes.
  • noun The flesh of such animals used as food.
  • noun Informal A person, especially one considered deficient in something.
  • intransitive verb To catch or try to catch fish.
  • intransitive verb To look for something by feeling one's way; grope.
  • intransitive verb To seek something in a sly or indirect way.
  • intransitive verb To catch or try to catch (fish).
  • intransitive verb To catch or try to catch fish in.
  • intransitive verb To catch or pull as if fishing.
  • idiom (fish or cut bait) To proceed with an activity or abandon it altogether.
  • idiom (like a fish out of water) Completely unfamiliar with one's surroundings or activity.
  • idiom (neither fish nor fowl) Having no specific characteristics; indefinite.
  • idiom (other fish to fry) Other matters to attend to.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The Southern Fish, Piscis Australis or Austrinus.
  • noun A name sometimes applied to fishes having ocellated spots of color resembling auxiliary eyes.
  • noun Chænobryttus gulosus, one of the sun-fishes found in fresh waters of the eastern United States.
  • noun A counter used in various games.
  • noun A vertebrate which has gills and fins adapting it for living in the water.
  • noun In zoology: Any branchiferous vertebrate with a complete cranium and a lyriform shoulder-girdle. In this sense, the leptocardians and myzonts are excluded, but the selachians are included with true Pisces.
  • noun A branchiferous or teleostomous vertebrate with dermal plates or membrane-bones superadded to the primordial cranium and shoulder-girdle, and with the branchiæ free outwardly. The sturgeons as well as all the osseous fishes are included in the group thus defined.
  • noun In popular language, any animal that lives entirely in the water; a swimming as distinguished from a flying or walking animal, including cetaceous mammals, batrachians, mollusks, crustaceans, and echinoderms, as well as fishes proper: commonly distinguished by some specifying word, as blackfish, shellfish, starfish. See these and other compounds.
  • noun The meat of a fish or of fishes used as food.
  • noun The codfish: so called specifically by Cape Cod and Cape Ann fishermen, in distinction from fish of other kinds, as mackerel, herring, etc.
  • noun The zodiacal sign Pisces.
  • noun Nautical: A purchase used to raise the flukes of an anchor up to the bill-board. Also called a fish-tackle.
  • noun A long piece of timber or iron used to strengthen a mast or a yard when sprung.
  • noun In joinery, etc., a piece secured alongside of another to strengthen or stiffen it.
  • noun Fish that are or may be caught with bait.
  • noun Fish having a more or less ossified skeleton: thus distinguished from cartilaginous fish. See cut under Esox.
  • noun See coarse fish.
  • noun In ichthyology, a fish inhabiting the sea near the shore and in water of moderate depth: thus contrasting with deep-sea fish and pelagic fish.
  • noun The squid or cuttlefish.
  • noun See also whitefish.
  • To catch or attempt to catch fish; be employed in taking fish by any means, as by angling or drawing nets.
  • To be arranged or adjusted so as to catch fish; bo capable of catching fish: as, the net or pound is fishing; the net was set, but was not fishing; the net fishes seven feet (that is, seven feet deep).
  • To catch by means of any of the operations or processes of fishing: as, to fish minnows or lobsters.
  • To attempt to catch fish in; try with any apparatus for catching fish, as a rod or net.
  • To use in or for fishing: as, gill-nets are fished; an oysterman fishes his boat.
  • To catch or lay hold of, in water, mud, or some analogous medium or position, as if by fishing; draw out or up; get or secure in any way with some difficulty or search, as if by angling.
  • To search by dragging, raking, or sweeping.
  • Nautical: To strengthen, as a weak spar, by lashing one or more pieces of wood or iron along the weak place.
  • To hoist the flukes of, as an anchor, up to the bill-board.
  • In joinery, to strengthen, as a piece of wood, by fastening another piece above or below it, and sometimes both.
  • In railroading, to splice, as rails, with a fish-joint.
  • To obtain by careful search or study or by artifice; elicit by pains or stratagem: as, to fish out a meaning from an obscure sentence, a secret from a person, or an admission from an adverse witness.
  • To pull up or out from or as from some deep place, as if by fishing: as, the boy fished out a top from the depths of his pocket.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A name loosely applied in popular usage to many animals of diverse characteristics, living in the water.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English fisc.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English fiscian, from Proto-Germanic *fiskōnan.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English fisc, from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz (compare West Frisian/Swedish fisk, Dutch vis, German Fisch), from Proto-Indo-European *pik̑sk̑os, *pisḱ- (compare Irish iasc, Latin piscis, Russian пискарь (piskárĭ) 'groundling', Sanskrit picchā 'calf (leg)', picchila, picchala 'slimy, slippery').

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Examples

  • Meat, poultry, and fish• Place raw meat, poultry, or fish in a covered dish to keep the juices from dripping onto other foods, and store it in the back of the refrigerator.

    Tip of the Day: How to keep food fresh 2008

  • Meat, poultry, and fish• Place raw meat, poultry, or fish in a covered dish to keep the juices from dripping onto other foods, and store it in the back of the refrigerator.

    Tip of the Day: How to keep food fresh 2008

  • -- According to the quantity of fat it contains, fish may be divided into two classes: _ (_a_) dry, or_ lean _fish_, and _ (_b_) oily fish_.

    School and Home Cooking Carlotta Cherryholmes Greer

  • Fish may also be divided into two classes, according to the water in which they live, fish from the sea being termed _salt-water fish_, and those from rivers and lakes _fresh-water fish_

    School and Home Cooking Carlotta Cherryholmes Greer

  • The schooners make three trips to the banks of Newfoundland in a season; the first, or spring cargo, are large, thick fish, which, after being properly salted and dried, are kept alternately above and under ground, till they become so mellow as to be denominated _dumb fish_.

    Travels in the United States of America Commencing in the Year 1793, and Ending in 1797. With the Author's Journals of his Two Voyages Across the Atlantic. William Priest

  • Thus, _All fish are cold-blooded_, ∴ _some cold-blooded things are fish: _ this is a sound inference by the mere manner of expression; and equally sound is the inference, _All fish are warm-blooded_, ∴ _some warm-blooded things are fish_.

    Logic Deductive and Inductive Carveth Read 1889

  • But, marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since no cetaceous creature can be denominated a _fish_) into which he was received still lived, and accompanied him.

    Tales of the Chesapeake George Alfred Townsend 1877

  • More as once I'se heah yo 'say as how yo' had t 'fish an' fish an '_fish_ t' git a bit of a clew. "

    The Diamond Cross Mystery Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story Chester K. Steele

  • To get more information about dietary supplement interactions, including fish oil, you can access my free health application at pilladvised.com After sign-up, type fish oil into supplements category and scroll over the term fish oil for more information.

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com M.D. Leo Galland 2011

  • Yes | No | Report from muskiemaster wrote 14 weeks 15 hours ago at least people are getting to see fishing as it happens. and you have to admit seeing these guys pull in fish after fish is appealing and makes you want to get out there yourself and get better at it.

    Do Pro Bass Tournaments Promote the Sport of Fishing? 2009

Comments

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  • As in the Fish Slapping Dance.

    October 7, 2007

  • Ah, the FSD. Here's an embedded version:

    January 22, 2008

  • Thanks, John! I love it.

    October 21, 2008

  • soul

    July 22, 2009