Word.ws English Dictionary

goatfish

goatfish noun: any of the family Mullidae of brightly coloured fish with two barbels on the chin. Also the alternative spelling of goat-fish.

goatfish: any of the family Mullidae of brightly coloured fish with two barbels on the chin
Image: Divervincent, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

goatfish (plural goatfishes or goatfish)

  1. Any of the family Mullidae of brightly coloured fish with two barbels on the chin.
    Synonyms:
    mullid, red mullet

Also used as

goatfish is also the alternative spelling of goat-fish.

Synonyms of goatfish

Forms of goatfish

pluralgoatfishes
pluralgoatfish

Origin of goatfish

From goat + fish. The Mullidae sense is because of the fish's beard (as it were) seeming like a goat's beard (a goatee). The chimera sense is because the mythical beast is half goat and half fish.

Words formed from goatfish

Questions about goatfish

What does goatfish mean?
Goatfish means any of the family Mullidae of brightly coloured fish with two barbels on the chin.
What part of speech is goatfish?
Goatfish is a noun.
What is the plural of goatfish?
The plural of goatfish is goatfishes.

Words near goatfish in the dictionary

  1. goaten
  2. Goater
  3. Goaters
  4. Goates
  5. Goateses
  6. goatfish
  7. goatfishes
  8. goatflesh
  9. goatfuck
  10. goatfucker
  11. goatfuckers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: goatfish (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:

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