kittenfish

kittenfish verb: to fool (someone) on a dating app by presenting oneself in a more favourable light; to engage in kittenfishing.

Verb

kittenfish (third-person singular simple present kittenfishes, present participle kittenfishing, simple past and past participle kittenfished)

(neologism, transitive) To fool (someone) on a dating app by presenting oneself in a more favourable light; to engage in kittenfishing.
- Someone who kittenfishes presents themselves unrealistically on their profile, whether they use heavily edited or old-as-hell pics, or they lie about their age, occupation or lifestyle.2019 May 24, Brittany Wong, “The Biggest White Lies Told On Dating Apps, As Shared In Tweets”, in HuffPost, archived from the original on 13 Apr 2024
- You'll obviously know you've been kittenfished once you do meet up for that first date. But psychologist Ana Jovanovic says there are a few signs to look out for in order to spot it beforehand.2019 July 19, Danielle Page, “Kittenfishing: The common dating trend you're probably (slightly) guilty of”, in NBC News, archived from the original on 30 Apr 2024

third-person singular present	kittenfishes
present participle	kittenfishing
past participle	kittenfished
past	kittenfished

Blend of kitten + catfish, regarded as a less severe form of catfishing. Equivalent to kitten + -fish.

What does kittenfish mean?: Kittenfish means to fool (someone) on a dating app by presenting oneself in a more favourable light; to engage in kittenfishing.
What part of speech is kittenfish?: Kittenfish is a verb.
What is the past tense of kittenfish?: The past tense of kittenfish is kittenfished.

Adapted from Wiktionary: kittenfish (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: 2026-09-02

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