fish
/fɪʃ/noun, verb
fish is spelled F-I-S-H: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 79 times per million words in written English, the 1,338th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “fish vs fishes” about 1,600 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, fish means “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…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of fish is fishes.
How many letters and syllables are in fish?
| Letters | 4: F-I-S-H |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 |
| In writing | 79 times per million words; the 1,338th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is fish?
Fish appears 79 times per million words in written English, the 1,338th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce fish?
- US /fɪʃ/
- Australia /fɪ̝ʃ/
- /fɘʃ/
Fish has one syllable.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-fish.ogg, En-us-fish.ogg, En-au-fish.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with fish
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: ghoti (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with fish?
2 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as fish from its last stressed vowel (/ɪʃ/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of fish
- fishes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- fishing participle, present
- fished participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does fish mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 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
Any vertebrate, including tetrapods.
- 3
archaicAny animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.
- 4
archaicNow used in combination: (e.g., starfish, cuttlefish, jellyfish, etc).
- 5
Cod; codfish.
- 6
The flesh of the fish used as food.
The seafood pasta had lots of fish but not enough pasta.
- 7
An aquatic or semiaquatic animal suitable for consumption during fasting on Fridays during Lent.
- 8
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.
- 9
A period of time spent fishing.
The fish at the lake didn't prove successful.
- 10
An instance of seeking something.
Merely two fishes for information told the whole story.
- 11
obsoleteA counter, used in various games.
verb
- 1
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.
- 2
To search (a body of water) for something other than fish.
They fished the surrounding lakes for the dead body.
- 3
To use as bait when fishing.
- 4
To (attempt to) find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects.
Why are you fishing through my things?
- 5
To talk to people in an attempt to get them to say something, or seek to obtain something by artifice.
The detective visited the local pubs fishing around for more information.
- 6
Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.
- 7
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).
- 8
To hoist the flukes of.
noun
- 1
Acronym of fluorescent in situ hybridization, a molecular cytogenetic technique used to identify whether a DNA sample has a specific sequence.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Fish in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | poisson , poissons , pêche , pêcher |
| German | Fisch, Fiisch, Fusch (Vorderpfälzisch) , Fischzug , fischen, angeln |
| Portuguese | peixe , peixes, cardume , pesca, pescaria , pescar |
| Spanish | pez, pescado, peje, pesce (disused) , pesca , pescar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fish come from?
From Middle English fisch, from Old English fisċ (“fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *fisk, from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz (“fish”), from Proto-Indo-European *piskós (“fish”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).