Word.ws English Dictionary

overfishing

overfishing is the present participle and gerund of overfish.

Meaning of overfish

Verb

overfish (third-person singular simple present overfishes, present participle overfishing, simple past and past participle overfished)

  1. (ambitransitive) To fish (an area or a species) excessively, often substantially reducing over several years the supply of one or more species of fish in an area.
    • In the 1970s, it become^([sic]) increasingly clear that cod were being overfished in the northwest Atlantic Ocean.2001, Bob Ritter, “Chapter 4: Sustaining Aquatic Ecosystems”, in Science 10, Nelson Thomson Learning, page 152

Noun

overfishing (usually uncountable, plural overfishings)

  1. (usually) Fishing that reduces the stock of remaining fish in an area to below that which is acceptable.
    • Most of the overfishings in the international sense are a product of misuse.1975, Northwest Mariculture Laws: Papers and Presentations..., page 22
    • The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania.[…]It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led...2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2022

Forms of overfishing

pluraloverfishings

Questions about overfishing

What does overfishing mean?
Overfishing means fishing that reduces the stock of remaining fish in an area to below that which is acceptable.
What is overfishing the present participle and gerund of?
Overfishing is the present participle and gerund of overfish.
What part of speech is overfishing?
Overfishing is a noun.
What is the plural of overfishing?
The plural of overfishing is overfishings.

Words near overfishing in the dictionary

  1. overfish
  2. overfished
  3. overfisher
  4. overfishers
  5. overfishes
  6. overfishing
  7. overfishings
  8. overfit
  9. overfit stream
  10. overfit streams
  11. overfits

Source and license

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