Word.ws English Dictionary

fish out of water

fish out of water noun: a person in unfamiliar and often uncomfortable surroundings.

Noun

fish out of water (plural fishes out of water or fish out of water)

  1. (idiomatic) A person in unfamiliar and often uncomfortable surroundings.
    • [I]nto this queer assembly, something of a fish out of water and wholly out of his element, strode Cherry Bim, that redoubtable man.1921, Edgar Wallace, chapter 2, in The Book of All-Power
    • A pitcher at bat is usually considered such a fish out of water that he is expected to foul, ground or strike out.1942 May 25, “Sport: Pitcher Hits Ball”, in TIME, archived from the original on 18 Oct 2025, retrieved 02 Oct 2016

fish out of water meaning in Malay

fish out of water in Malay

a person in unfamiliar, and often uncomfortable, surroundings
seperti rusa masuk kampung, bagai kerbau terkejut oleh gong, tak pernah masuk gelanggang bergung

Synonyms of fish out of water

Forms of fish out of water

pluralfishes out of water
pluralfish out of water

Origin of fish out of water

* Earliest recorded uses: "fish out of the water" (1585, Lamentable Complaint of Commonality), "Fishes out of the Water" (1613, Samuel Purchas, Pilgrimage). * Earliest use of metaphor by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales: Prologue (c. 1405) as "fissh þᵗ is waterlees". Compare also the antonymous French comme un poisson dans l'eau, German wie ein Fisch im Wasser.

Questions about fish out of water

What does fish out of water mean?
Fish out of water means a person in unfamiliar and often uncomfortable surroundings.
What is fish out of water in Malay?
Fish out of water in Malay is seperti rusa masuk kampung, bagai kerbau terkejut oleh gong, tak pernah masuk gelanggang bergung. See Fish out of water meaning in Malay.
What part of speech is fish out of water?
Fish out of water is a noun.
What is the plural of fish out of water?
The plural of fish out of water is fishes out of water.

Words near fish out of water in the dictionary

  1. fish oil
  2. fish oils
  3. fish one's wish
  4. fish or cut bait
  5. fish out
  6. fish out of water
  7. fish owl
  8. fish owls
  9. fish paper
  10. fish pass
  11. fish passes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fish out of water (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-fish out of water.ogg.

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