Word.ws English Dictionary

fishkill

fishkill noun: an environmental event in which fish are killed.

Noun

fishkill (plural fishkills)

  1. An environmental event in which fish are killed.
    • Fishkills, with some exceptions, result from low dissolved oxygen conditions accompanying the decomposition of organic materials[…]1978, United States. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA 650/3, volume 3, page 11

Proper noun capitalized: Fishkill

Fishkill

  1. A town and village therein, in Dutchess County, New York, United States.

Forms of fishkill

pluralfishkills

Origin of fishkill

From fish + kill.

From Dutch Viskil, composed of vis (“fish”) + kil (“creek”), modified or calqued based on the English cognates fish and (Dutch-origin) kill.

Words formed from fishkill

Questions about fishkill

What does fishkill mean?
Fishkill means an environmental event in which fish are killed.
What part of speech is fishkill?
Fishkill can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of fishkill?
The plural of fishkill is fishkills.

Words near fishkill in the dictionary

  1. fishkeeper
  2. fishkeepers
  3. fishkeeping
  4. fishkettle
  5. fishkettles
  6. fishkill
  7. fishkills
  8. Fishkin
  9. fishkind
  10. Fishkinds
  11. Fishkins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fishkill (page history and authors); Fishkill (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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Cite this entry: “fishkill.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fishkill. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.