Fish or phish?
fish is a noun meaning “A typically cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the…”; phish is a verb meaning “To engage in phishing”. Use fish as a noun and phish as a verb (phish is also a noun: “A phishing attack”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) fish is about 155 times as common as phish.
What is the difference between fish and phish?
| fish | phish | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb, suffix | verb, noun |
| 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 Any vertebrate, including tetrapods A period of time spent fishing | To engage in phishing A phishing attack |
| Example | Salmon is a fish | none recorded |
| Forms | fishes | phishes, phishing, phished |
| Pronunciation | /fɪʃ/ /fɪ̝ʃ/ /fɘʃ/ | not recorded |
| In writing | 79 times per million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: fish and phish 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 phish
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
phish
- 1
To engage in phishing
- 2
A phishing attack
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 phish?
fish appears 79 times per million words; phish about once in every 2 million words.
fish 79 times per million wordsphish about once in every 2 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).