Fished

How to spell fished

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fished

What does fished mean?

1. verbCaught or tried to catch fish, usually with a rod, net, or line.
2. verbSearched or groped for something hidden, or tried indirectly to draw out information or praise.

Fished in a sentence

• They fished from the pier until the tide turned.

• She fished in her bag for the missing keys.

• We fished the lake every summer when the children were young.

• He fished for compliments by mentioning his promotion at dinner.

Where does fished come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word comes from the Old English fisc, meaning simply a fish, which in turn descended from a common Germanic ancestor; related forms survive across the family tree, including the Dutch vis and the German Fisch. The verb sense, 'to catch or try to catch fish', grew naturally out of the noun and was in use well before the Norman period. The past-tense form 'fished' adds the regular weak ending -ed, the same dependable pattern English uses for thousands of verbs, so the spelling stays transparent even though the ending is pronounced as a sharp 't' sound after the 'sh'. By the 1500s the verb had also taken on the figurative sense of searching or groping for something hidden, as in fishing for an object in a pocket or fishing for praise. The spelling has barely shifted in over a thousand years, which is why 'fished' is one of the more stable words in the language.

How the word is built

• fish (Old English fisc: a fish)
• -ed (past tense suffix)