fish

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of numerous cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates of the superclass Pisces, characteristically having fins, gills, and a streamlined body and including specifically:
2. n. Any of the class Osteichthyes, having a bony skeleton.
3. n. Any of the class Chondrichthyes, having a cartilaginous skeleton and including the sharks, rays, and skates.
4. n. The flesh of such animals used as food.
5. n. Any of various primitive aquatic vertebrates of the class Cyclostomata, lacking jaws and including the lampreys and hagfishes.
6. n. Any of various unrelated aquatic animals, such as a jellyfish, cuttlefish, or crayfish.
7. n. Informal A person, especially one considered deficient in something: a poor fish.
8. v. To catch or try to catch fish.
9. v. To look for something by feeling one's way; grope: fished in both pockets for a coin.
10. v. To seek something in a sly or indirect way: fish for compliments.
11. v. To catch or try to catch (fish).
12. v. To catch or try to catch fish in: fish mountain streams.
13. v. To catch or pull as if fishing: deftly fished the corn out of the boiling water.
14. fish out To deplete (a lake, for example) of fish by fishing.
15. idiom. fish in troubled waters To try to take advantage of a confused situation.
16. idiom. fish or cut bait Informal To proceed with an activity or abandon it altogether.
17. idiom. like a fish out of water Completely unfamiliar with one's surroundings or activity.
18. idiom. neither fish nor fowl Having no specific characteristics; indefinite.
19. idiom. other fish to fry Informal Other matters to attend to: He declined to come along to the movie, saying he had other fish to fry.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A vertebrate which has gills and fins adapting it for living in the water. In this sense the word has been and is still largely used as the equivalent of the former extensive class Pisces, including the leptocardians, myzonts, and selachians, as well as true Pisces. But the differences between these several types of structure are so great that the leptocardians and myzonts have been each contrasted with all remaining vertebrates.
2. n. In zoology: Any branchiferous vertebrate with a complete cranium and a lyriform shoulder-girdle. In this sense, the leptocardians and myzonts are excluded, but the selachians are included with true Pisces.
3. n. A branchiferous or teleostomous vertebrate with dermal plates or membrane-bones superadded to the primordial cranium and shoulder-girdle, and with the branchiæ free outwardly. The sturgeons as well as all the osseous fishes are included in the group thus defined.
4. n. In popular language, any animal that lives entirely in the water; a swimming as distinguished from a flying or walking animal, including cetaceous mammals, batrachians, mollusks, crustaceans, and echinoderms, as well as fishes proper: commonly distinguished by some specifying word, as blackfish, shellfish, starfish. See these and other compounds.
5. n. The meat of a fish or of fishes used as food.
6. n. The codfish: so called specifically by Cape Cod and Cape Ann fishermen, in distinction from fish of other kinds, as mackerel, herring, etc.
7. n. The zodiacal sign Pisces.
8. n. Nautical: A purchase used to raise the flukes of an anchor up to the bill-board. Also called a fish-tackle.
9. n. A long piece of timber or iron used to strengthen a mast or a yard when sprung.
10. n. In joinery, etc., a piece secured alongside of another to strengthen or stiffen it.
11. n. Fish that are or may be caught with bait.
12. n. Fish having a more or less ossified skeleton: thus distinguished from cartilaginous fish. See cut under Esox.
13. n. See coarse fish.
14. n. In ichthyology, a fish inhabiting the sea near the shore and in water of moderate depth: thus contrasting with deep-sea fish and pelagic fish.
15. n. The squid or cuttlefish.
16. n. See also whitefish.
17. To catch or attempt to catch fish; be employed in taking fish by any means, as by angling or drawing nets.
18. To be arranged or adjusted so as to catch fish; bo capable of catching fish: as, the net or pound is fishing; the net was set, but was not fishing; the net fishes seven feet (that is, seven feet deep).
19. To catch by means of any of the operations or processes of fishing: as, to fish minnows or lobsters.
20. To attempt to catch fish in; try with any apparatus for catching fish, as a rod or net.
21. To use in or for fishing: as, gill-nets are fished; an oysterman fishes his boat.
22. To catch or lay hold of, in water, mud, or some analogous medium or position, as if by fishing; draw out or up; get or secure in any way with some difficulty or search, as if by angling.
23. To search by dragging, raking, or sweeping.
24. Nautical: To strengthen, as a weak spar, by lashing one or more pieces of wood or iron along the weak place.
25. To hoist the flukes of, as an anchor, up to the bill-board.
26. In joinery, to strengthen, as a piece of wood, by fastening another piece above or below it, and sometimes both.
27. In railroading, to splice, as rails, with a fish-joint.
28. To obtain by careful search or study or by artifice; elicit by pains or stratagem: as, to fish out a meaning from an obscure sentence, a secret from a person, or an admission from an adverse witness.
29. To pull up or out from or as from some deep place, as if by fishing: as, the boy fished out a top from the depths of his pocket.
30. n. A counter used in various games.
31. n. The Southern Fish, Piscis Australis or Austrinus.
32. n. A name sometimes applied to fishes having ocellated spots of color resembling auxiliary eyes.
33. n. Chænobryttus gulosus, one of the sun-fishes found in fresh waters of the eastern United States.

Wiktionary

1. v. intransitive To try to catch fish, whether successfully or not.
2. v. transitive To try to find something other than fish in (a body of water).
3. v. intransitive To attempt to find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects.
4. v. intransitive, followed by "around" To attempt to obtain information by talking to people.
5. v. intransitive, cricket Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.
6. v. transitive, figuratively, followed by "for" To attempt to gain.
7. v. nautical To repair a spar or mast using a brace often called a fish (see NOUN above).
8. n. countable A cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gills.
9. n. possibly archaic Any animal that lives exclusively in water.
10. n. uncountable The flesh of the fish used as food.
11. n. countable A period of time spent fishing.
12. n. countable An instance of seeking something.
13. n. uncountable A card game in which the object is to obtain pairs of cards.
14. n. uncountable, derogatory, slang A woman.
15. n. countable, slang An easy victim for swindling.
16. n. countable, poker slang A bad poker player.
17. n. countable, nautical A makeshift overlapping longitudinal brace used to temporarily repair or extend a spar or mast of a ship.
18. n. countable, nautical Torpedo.
19. adj. Of or relating to fish; piscine; ichthyic.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A counter, used in various games.
2. n. A name loosely applied in popular usage to many animals of diverse characteristics, living in the water.
3. n. (Zoöl.) An oviparous, vertebrate animal usually having fins and a covering scales or plates. It breathes by means of gills, and lives almost entirely in the water. See Pisces.
4. n. The twelfth sign of the zodiac; Pisces.
5. n. The flesh of fish, used as food.
6. n. A purchase used to fish the anchor.
7. n. A piece of timber, somewhat in the form of fish, used to strengthen a mast or yard.
8. v. To attempt to catch fish; to be employed in taking fish, by any means, as by angling or drawing a net.
9. v. To seek to obtain by artifice, or indirectly to seek to draw forth.
10. v. To catch; to draw out or up.
11. v. To search by raking or sweeping.
12. v. To try with a fishing rod; to catch fish in.
13. v. To strengthen (a beam, mast, etc.), or unite end to end (two timbers, railroad rails, etc.) by bolting a plank, timber, or plate to the beam, mast, or timbers, lengthwise on one or both sides. See Fish joint, under Fish, n.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. catch or try to catch fish or shellfish
2. n. the twelfth sign of the zodiac; the sun is in this sign from about February 19 to March 20
3. n. (astrology) a person who is born while the sun is in Pisces
4. n. the flesh of fish used as food
5. v. seek indirectly
6. n. any of various mostly cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates usually having scales and breathing through gills