different between dragger vs fish

English

Etymology

drag +? -er

Noun

dragger (plural draggers)

1. Something that drags.
2. (nautical) A trawler.
3. One who takes part in drag racing.

   Synonym: dragster

   • 1962, The Saturday Evening Post (volume 235, page 10)

     On a raceway near Riverside, California, a dragger was fatally injured when his dragster went out of control […]

   • 2016, Scotty Gosson, Lost Drag Strips II: More Ghosts of Quarter-Miles Past (page 63)

     In 1960, Honolulu motorcycle racer (and Street Roadster dragger) Danny Ongais stepped up to the dragster ranks […]

4. A vehicle used in drag racing.

   Synonym: dragster

   • 1967, United States. Congress. Senate, Hearings (volume 8, page 4149)

     So young speed enthusiasts can get high performance equipment for their "street draggers."

5. (slang) A car thief.
   • 1945, Jack Henry, What Price Crime? (page 92)

     Like their friends the "draggers," the "hoisters" or shoplifters are having a thin time these days, […]

   • 2020, Noel 'Razor' Smith, The Dirty Dozen

     [A]t least, there were no dodgy whispers about him and that was a big plus in the tight-knit community of blaggers, draggers and carpet baggers of this corner of north-West London.
     Sean was pretty pissed off that the car they had meant to use for that day's robbery was an old rust-bucket Volkswagen Golf.

Derived terms

• van-dragger

Translations

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: f?sh, IPA^(key): /f??/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /f??/
• Rhymes: -??
• Homophones: phish, ghoti

Etymology 1

From Middle English fisch, from Old English fis? (“fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *fisk, from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz (“fish”) (compare West Frisian fisk, Dutch vis, Danish fisk, Norwegian fisk, Swedish fisk, German Fisch), from Proto-Indo-European *peys?- (“fish”) (compare Irish iasc, Latin piscis).

Noun

fish (countable and uncountable, plural fish or fishes)

1. (countable) A cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gills.

2. (archaic or loosely) Any animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.
3. (Newfoundland) Cod; codfish.
4. (uncountable) The flesh of the fish used as food.

5. (uncountable) A card game in which the object is to obtain cards in pairs or sets of four (depending on the variation), by asking the other players for cards of a particular rank.
6. (uncountable, derogatory, slang) A woman.
7. (countable, slang) An easy victim for swindling.
8. (countable, poker slang) A bad poker player. Compare shark (a good poker player).
9. (countable, nautical) A makeshift overlapping longitudinal brace, originally shaped roughly like a fish, used to temporarily repair or extend a spar or mast of a ship.
10. (nautical) A purchase used to fish the anchor.
11. (countable, nautical, military) A torpedo (the self-propelled explosive device).
    • 1977, Richard O'Kane, Clear the Bridge: The War Patrols of the U.S.S. Tang, Ballantine Books (2003), page 344:

      The second and third fish went to the middle of her long superstructure and under her forward deck.

12. (zoology) A paraphyletic grouping of the following extant taxonomic groups:
    1. Class Myxini, the hagfish (no vertebra)
    2. Class Petromyzontida, the lampreys (no jaw)
    3. Within infraphylum Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates (also including Tetrapoda)
       1. Class Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous fish such as sharks and rays
       2. Superclass Osteichthyes, bony fish.
13. (cartomancy) The thirty-fourth Lenormand card.
14. (prison slang) a new (usually vulnerable) prisoner

Usage notes

The collective plural of fish is normally fish in the UK, except in archaic texts where fishes may be encountered; in the US, fishes is encountered as well, but much less commonly. When referring to two or more kinds of fish, the plural is fishes.

Synonyms

• (potential swindling victim): mark
• (card game): Go Fish
• (bad poker player): donkey, donk

Hyponyms

• (aquatic cold-blooded vertabrae with gills): Cephalaspidomorphi, Chondrichthyes, Osteichthyes
• (food): seafood

Derived terms

Related terms

• (adj): fishly, piscine, fishy (inf.)
• (astronomical): The Fish, Pisces
• (collective): piscifauna
• (combinatorial form): pisci- (Latinate, general)
• (fish-catcher): See fisher
• (fish-eater): piscivore
• (fish-infesting): piscolous
• (fish-killing): piscicidal
• (fish-like): fishly, piscose (culinary), fishy, fishlike (inf.)
• (fish science): fishlore, piscatology (irreg.)
• (fish-shaped): pisciform
• (fish vendor): fishmonger, piscitarian
• (full of fish): fishful, pisculent
• (skin disorder): fish-skin disease
• (state of being a fish): fishdom, fishhood (formal), piscinity (formal), fishiness (inf.)

Descendants

• Sranan Tongo: fisi
• ? Chinook Jargon: pish
• ? Finnish: fisu
• ? Zulu: ufishi

Translations

See fish/translations § Noun.

See also

• Appendix:Fish

Etymology 2

Deverbal from to fish (etymology 3).

Noun

fish (plural fishes)

1. A period of time spent fishing.

2. An instance of seeking something.

Etymology 3

From Old English fiscian, from Proto-West Germanic *fisk?n, from Proto-Germanic *fisk?n?.

Verb

fish (third-person singular simple present fishes, present participle fishing, simple past and past participle fished)

1. (intransitive) To hunt fish or other aquatic animals in a body of water.
   • 19th c., anonymous, "The Bonny Ship the 'Diamond'"

     It's cheer up, my lads, let your hearts never fail,

     For the bonny ship the Diamond goes a-fishing for the whale.

   She went to the river to fish for trout.

2. (transitive) To search (a body of water) for something other than fish.

3. (fishing, transitive) To use as bait when fishing.
4. (intransitive) To (attempt to) find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects.

   Synonym: rummage

5. (intransitive, followed by "for" or "around for") To talk to people in an attempt to get them to say something, or seek to obtain something by artifice.
   • 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oedipus Tyrannus; Or, Swellfoot The Tyrant: A Tragedy in Two Acts:

     Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,
     But ’tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,
     And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.

6. (intransitive, cricket) Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.
7. (nautical, transitive) To repair (a spar or mast) by fastening a beam or other long object (often called a fish) over the damaged part (see Noun above).
   • 1970, James Henderson, The Frigates, an account of the lesser warships of the wars from 1793 to 1815, Wordsworth (1998), page 143:

     […] the crew were set to replacing and splicing the rigging and fishing the spars.

8. (nautical, transitive) To hoist the flukes of.
   • 1860, Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons (page 214)

     Found that the cause of the ship's having drifted on the night of the 19th, was from the bight of the chain span (used to fish the anchor,) having slipped between the shank and upper fluke, thereby preventing the lower fluke from opening […]

Synonyms

• (try to catch a fish): angle, drop in a line
• (try to find something): rifle, rummage
• (attempt to gain (compliments, etc)): angle

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 4

Borrowed from French fiche (“peg, mark”).

Noun

fish (plural fishes)

1. (obsolete) A counter, used in various games.

References

• fish in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Further reading

• Fish (disambiguation) on the English Wikipedia. English Wikipedia
• fish on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• fish (food) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• fishing on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Middle English

Noun

fish (plural fishes or fish)

1. Alternative form of fisch