Word.ws English Dictionary

fish tape

fish tape noun: a long strip of stiff metal, frequently kept on a spool, used to guide or draw wires and cables through a building.

Noun

fish tape (countable and uncountable, plural fish tapes)

  1. A long strip of stiff metal, frequently kept on a spool, used to guide or draw wires and cables through a building.
    • The installers attempted to thread the fish tape through the conduit, but were unable to reach around the tight bend in the tube.

Forms of fish tape

pluralfish tapes

Origin of fish tape

From fish (“to get hold of an object”) + tape.

Questions about fish tape

What does fish tape mean?
Fish tape means a long strip of stiff metal, frequently kept on a spool, used to guide or draw wires and cables through a building.
What part of speech is fish tape?
Fish tape is a noun.
What is the plural of fish tape?
The plural of fish tape is fish tapes.

Words near fish tape in the dictionary

  1. fish tails
  2. fish tale
  3. fish tales
  4. fish tank
  5. fish tanks
  6. fish tape
  7. fish tapes
  8. fish tea
  9. fish teas
  10. fish therapies
  11. fish therapy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fish tape (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-us-fish-tape.ogg.

Cite this entry: “fish tape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fish_tape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.