fish out
Britishverb
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Also, fish up . Discover and retrieve something from a pile or store. For example, She finally fished out the right letter from the files , or He fished up a scandal for the paper to run in the early edition . This usage likens pulling fish from the sea to finding something. [Mid-1600s]
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Deplete the fish in a body of water by fishing, as in This stream is completely fished out .
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
I felt like a fish out of water.
From Los Angeles Times
A numbers man more than a people person, he’s a fish out of water in Atlanta, as he spells out in the song “How Can I Call This Home?”
From Los Angeles Times
“And I think we’re going to see in the next weeks and months that there’s huge numbers of birds out at this project, and likely a lot of fish out there,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times
Recently Crowder spoke with The Times about his Southern background, including his upbringing in a liberal family in a conservative area and his current life as a fish out of water living in Los Angeles.
From Los Angeles Times
"I wasn't beaten up like my character in Boarders is, but the feeling of not fully belonging was always there - I felt a bit like a fish out of water and isolated at times," he tells the BBC.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
