Fish

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /fɪʃ/

Definitions

1. A cold-blooded aquatic vertebrate that typically has gills, fins, and scales, and lives entirely in water
2. An aquatic vertebrate that has gills for respiration and fins for movement, commonly covered in scales, found in both fresh and saltwater environments
3. An aquatic creature characterized by gills for breathing, fins for swimming, and often marked by scales, which resides in marine or freshwater habitats

Etymology: The noun has ancient Germanic roots that stretch back to a shared Indo-European word, and its cousins survive across the family: Dutch "vis", German "Fisch", Swedish "fisk", and Gothic "fisks" all mean the same thing. The Old English form "fisċ" passed into Middle English as "fisch" before settling into its modern spelling. Latin "piscis" and Irish "iasc" belong to the same ancient family, a rare case where the Latin and the Germanic words for the animal match so closely. The verb is a separate story. It came from Old English "fiscian", built on the same Germanic base, so the act of catching fish and the animal share a root but developed as distinct English words. Its meaning of angling for something, whether fish or information, grew out of that basic sense of catching.

Synonyms: catch, angling, aquatic animal, swim, scuba

Antonyms: flee, escape