catfish
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Etymology 1
From cat + fish. Likely so named for its prominent barbels like a cat's whiskers.
Noun
catfish (countable and uncountable, plural catfish or catfishes)
- Any fish of the order Siluriformes, mainly found in fresh water, lacking scales, and having barbels like whiskers around the mouth.
- Synonyms: (Africa) catlet, sheat, sheatfish, river chicken
- The meat of such a fish, popular in the Southern U.S. and Central Europe.
Derived terms
- airbreathing catfish
- banjo catfish
- blue catfish
- cat
- channel catfish
- cuckoo catfish
- electric catfish
- flathead catfish
- ghost catfish
- holy catfish
- leopard catfish
- mudcat
- North American freshwater catfish
- river chicken
- shark catfish
- striped catfish
- suffering catfish
- talking catfish
- thorny catfish
- three line catfish
- walking catfish
- wels catfish
- whale catfish
- widemouth blindcat
Translations
type of fish — See also translations at sheatfish
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Verb
catfish (third-person singular simple present catfishes, present participle catfishing, simple past and past participle catfished)
- To fish for catfish.
- I only use this rod for catfishing.
See also
- noodling
Etymology 2
From the 2010 documentary Catfish, supposedly inspired by the practice of fishermen keeping cod active by storing them with catfish (see sense 1) which nip at their tails.
Noun
catfish (plural catfishes)
- (Internet) Someone who creates a fake profile on a social media platform in order to deceive people.
- (Internet) Such a fake profile.
Translations
person operating fake profile
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fake profile
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Verb
catfish (third-person singular simple present catfishes, present participle catfishing, simple past and past participle catfished)
- (Internet, slang, transitive) To create and operate a fake online profile to deceive (someone).
- 2013 January 17, Mary Pilon, “In Te’o Story, Deception Ripped From the Screen”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- Getting catfished is when someone falls for a person online who is not necessarily real. It can involve pictures, phone calls, social media profiles, text messages, e-mails and even phony friends or family members.
- 2014 January 16, Cooperative Polygraphy (Community), season 5, episode 4, NBC, spoken by Troy (Donald Glover), 12:17 from the start:
- [to Abed] You made a profile for a fake dude and lured her into an online relationship. [to Annie] He's catfishing you.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:catfish.
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Translations
operate fake profile
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Derived terms
- wokefish
- blackfish
See also
- catshark
- maskfish
Further reading
- catfish on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- catfishing on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
Anagrams
- factish