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.
Again, I feel like a fish out of water.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 31, 2026
If you went in hoping to fish out a couple of rocks and an old boot, though, it wasn’t so hard to locate exactly what you were looking for.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
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 ● Jun. 20, 2025
And we scoop trillions of fish out of the water indiscriminately in large nets who are left to die slowly by asphyxiation.
From Salon ● Oct. 19, 2024
They ate fish out of cans and used knives and forks.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
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.
