Fish
/fɪʃ/noun
A limbless aquatic vertebrate that lives in water and breathes through gills.
Did you know?English fish comes from Proto-Germanic *fiskaz, and its deeper Indo-European ancestry is uncertain, which makes it one of those everyday words that survived from a very old, pre-recorded world.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*fiskaz
“fish”
Old English
OE
fisc
“fish”
Proto-West Germanic
PWGmc
*fisk
“fish”
Old High German
OHG
fisk
“fish”
Middle English
ME
fish
“fish”
Modern English
English
fish
“a fish; also used as a collective and in many compounds”