Even for landlubbers who never go fishing or even think about the subject, fishing terms play an important part in our everyday English language, giving us vivid, meaningful expressions to better express our meaning. Take the following examples from the domain of fishing.
A messed-up reel caused by a poor cast is a “backlash,” a word that can also mean to ordinary people “an opposite reaction to an action.” For example, the school board’s latest decision caused a backlash among normally complacent people.
While a can of worms can be useful to an angler about to bait her hook, a “can of worms” in ordinary life can be a potentially messy problem. Have you ever said something like, “let’s not open that can of worms” when you want to avoid something?
Speaking of an angler’s fishing hook, we have “barb” for the angled point of such a hook. And that has led to “barb” for a cutting, deliberately hurtful remark, as in “his public barb rankled the victim more than people realized.”
If in place of a cast line, we instead drag a net behind the boat to catch fish, we are employing a “dragnet,” a word that has gone into police parlance for a means of “netting” criminals. Think of the 1950s old-time radio show, “Dragnet,” with Sergeant Joe Friday trawling for the bad guys.
Then, when the unsuspecting fish takes the bait, i.e. strikes at the bait on our hook, it bites. We can use “bite” for the meaning of “to fall for a trick or a joke.” For example: “Why did the ostrich cross the road?”; “Okay. I’ll bite. Why did the ostrich cross the road?”
When we don’t catch the fish that took our bait, i.e. when it outsmarted us, we can console ourselves with the expression, “there are more fish in the ocean (or sea)” with the meaning of “there are other, maybe even better opportunities ahead for us.” A rejected suitor can console himself with that idiom from the world of fishing.
We can describe a heavy alcohol drinker as one who “drinks like a fish” or one who is “loaded to the gills,” comparing an imbiber to a fish that seems to drink or take in a lot of water. A suspicious incident or action can be “fishy,” as in “There’s something fishy about that fellow.”
A relatively new term describing the malicious attempt to acquire sensitive information like passwords and credit card details is “phishing,” which is a homophone or word that is pronounced the same as another (“fishing”) but differs in meaning and maybe spelling. The similarity to “fishing” goes back to the idea of using bait in an attempt to catch an unsuspecting victim.
So there you have just a few examples of how the sport of fishing has entered our ordinary language.
Kevin McCarthy, the award-winning author of “South Florida Waterways” (2013 – available at amazon.com for $7), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.