Fish or fishes?
fishes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fish. fish is also a noun: “A typically cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) fish is about 30 times as common as fishes.
What is the difference between fish and fishes?
| fish | fishes | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb, suffix | noun, verb, suffix |
| Meaning | 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 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 Any vertebrate, including tetrapods | third-person singular simple present indicative of fish multiple kinds of fish multiple individual fish |
| Example | Salmon is a fish | Coral bleaching threatens to disrupt the population equilibria of the reef’s fishes |
| Forms | fishes | none |
| Pronunciation | /fɪʃ/ /fɪ̝ʃ/ /fɘʃ/ | /ˈfɪʃɪz/ |
| In writing | 79 times per million words | 2.6 times per million words |
Sources: fish and fishes in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of fish and fishes
fish
- 1
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
- 2
A period of time spent fishing
The fish at the lake didn't prove successful
- 3
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
- 4
Acronym of fluorescent in situ hybridization, a molecular cytogenetic technique used to identify whether a DNA sample has a specific sequence
- 5
Forming terms denoting disingenuous ways by which people seek to attract attention, especially on a dating app
- 6
Any vertebrate, including tetrapods
- 7
An instance of seeking something
Merely two fishes for information told the whole story
- 8
To search (a body of water) for something other than fish
They fished the surrounding lakes for the dead body
fishes
- 1
multiple kinds of fish
Coral bleaching threatens to disrupt the population equilibria of the reef’s fishes
- 2
multiple individual fish
I caught six fishes today!
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, fish or fishes?
fish appears 79 times per million words; fishes 2.6 times per million words.
fish 79 times per million wordsfishes 2.6 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search fish vs fishes?
“fish vs fishes” is searched about 1,600 times a month on Google and 40 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“fishes vs fish”, “fish or fishes”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.