Word.ws English Dictionary

fishman

fishman noun: a man who sells fish.

Noun

fishman (plural fishmen)

  1. A man who sells fish.
    • Without an exception, save ourselves, the boat was occupied by fishmen and fishwomen, returning from effecting their purchases at Billinsgate, and who availed themselves of this new mode of transit to reach the West End, without having the barriers of Fleet-street, the hills of Holborn, or the...1846, “Our Tattler”, in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, page 175
    • We arrived in the night, and all were asleep and still. But in the morning, what a Babel of sounds assailed and stunned us! There were fishmen and fishwomen in “schools”—boatmen and boatwomen—sailors, of every nation, “pulling and hauling”—artisans of every description plying the hammer and the...1856, George Foxcroft Haskins, “Chapter V. — Marseilles”, in Travels in England, France, Italy, and Ireland, Boston: Donahoe, Patrick, page 29
  2. A mythic or fictional being that is part man, part fish.
    • It wore no clothes, but had the cocked hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something. Jack, with all his courage, was a little daunted; but now or never, thought he; so up he went boldly to the cogitating fish-man, took off his hat, and made his best bow.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 529
    • The loan to the Chinese legends of the Babylonian fabulous traditions of the arrival out of the water of fishmen acquainted with the art of writing, is so clear and evident that we need not insist again to make it understood.1888, Terrien de Lacouperie, “The Fabulous Fishmen of Babylonia in Ancient Chinese Legends”, in The Babylonian and Oriental Record, London, page 224

Proper noun capitalized: Fishman

Fishman

  1. A surname.

Forms of fishman

pluralfishmen

Plural of fishman: fishmen

Origin of fishman

From Middle English fisscheman; equivalent to fish + -man.

Questions about fishman

What does fishman mean?
Fishman means a man who sells fish.
What part of speech is fishman?
Fishman can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of fishman?
The plural of fishman is fishmen.

Words near fishman in the dictionary

  1. Fishlock
  2. Fishlocks
  3. fishlore
  4. fishlouse
  5. fishly
  6. fishman
  7. fishmarket
  8. fishmarkets
  9. fishmeal
  10. fishmeals
  11. fishmen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fishman (page history and authors); Fishman (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: “fishman.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fishman. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.