Word.ws English Dictionary

bigger fish to fry

bigger fish to fry noun: a much more pressing issue to attend to.

Noun

bigger fish to fry (plural bigger fish to fry)

  1. (idiomatic) A much more pressing issue to attend to.
    • Someone else needs to figure out the menu for the going-away party. I have bigger fish to fry.
    • Clyde’d been right about one thing—she had bigger fish to fry, and that included figuring out what Lucifer’s next move was.2009, Dakota Cassidy, chapter 7, in Kiss & Hell, New York, N.Y.: Berkley Sensation, →ISBN, page 105
    Synonyms:
    other fish to fry
  2. (idiomatic) A higher-valued result or target to reach.

Synonyms of bigger fish to fry

  • other fish to fry

Forms of bigger fish to fry

pluralbigger fish to fry

Origin of bigger fish to fry

An augmentative of other fish to fry.

Questions about bigger fish to fry

What does bigger fish to fry mean?
Bigger fish to fry means a much more pressing issue to attend to.
What part of speech is bigger fish to fry?
Bigger fish to fry is a noun.
What is the plural of bigger fish to fry?
The plural of bigger fish to fry is bigger fish to fry.

Words near bigger fish to fry in the dictionary

  1. biggened
  2. biggening
  3. biggens
  4. bigger
  5. bigger fish in the sea
  6. bigger fish to fry
  7. bigger picture
  8. bigger pictures
  9. bigger than Ben Hur
  10. bigger than life
  11. bigger than shit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bigger fish to fry (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bigger fish to fry.ogg.

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