Fishing

How to spell fishing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fishing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fishing mean?

1. nounThe activity or sport of catching fish.
2. verbSearching or angling indirectly for something, such as praise or information.

Fishing in a sentence

• noun

  He spent the whole weekend fishing on the river.

• verb

  She kept fishing for compliments about her new haircut.

• noun

  The village relies on fishing for most of its income.

• verb

  The reporter was clearly fishing for inside details.

Where does fishing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word comes from the Old English fisc, the Anglo-Saxon term for the cold-blooded water animal, which traces back to a shared Germanic root also seen in German Fisch and Dutch vis. The verb fiscian, meaning 'to catch fish', existed in Old English alongside the noun, and the activity of catching fish was being described as fishing well before 1300. The -ing suffix is the same native English ending that turns a verb into a noun naming the ongoing action, as in building or running. Over time the word stretched beyond water to figurative uses, so that fishing for compliments came to mean angling indirectly for praise. The spelling stays reliably simple because both fish and -ing are short, native English pieces with no silent letters or borrowed quirks.

How the word is built

• fish (the animal/the act of catching)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix denoting the activity)