Fisher

How to spell fisher

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fisher

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fisher mean?

1. nounA person who catches fish, especially for a living or as a regular pursuit.

Fisher in a sentence

• The local fisher sold fresh trout at the harbour market.

• Every commercial fisher on this coast needs a valid licence.

Where does fisher come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word that descends from the Old English fiscere, meaning 'one who catches fish'. It was formed straightforwardly from the noun fisc, the ancestor of modern 'fish', combined with the agent suffix -ere, which marked a person who performs an action and which survives today as the familiar -er ending. The word has cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch visser and the German Fischer, all built on the same root for 'fish'. From the later Middle Ages a separate North American sense developed: English-speaking settlers and trappers applied 'fisher' to a dark, tree-climbing member of the weasel family, although the animal rarely eats fish, so the name is something of a misnomer. The spelling stays transparent because it is simply 'fish' plus '-er', which is also the easiest way to keep it apart from its sound-alike 'fissure', a crack or split that comes from a quite different Latin root meaning 'to cleave'.

How the word is built

• fish (the animal/the act of catching fish)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)