wet fish

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English

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Noun

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wet fish (uncountable)

  1. Fresh fish intended to be cooked.
    • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor[1], volume 1, G. Woodfall and Son, page 68:
      [Plaice] is a difficult fish to manage, and in poor neighbourhoods an important one to manage well. The old hands make a profit out of it; new hands a loss. There’s not much cod or other wet fish sold to the poor, while plaice is in.
    • 2007, Virginia Ironside, review of You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson by Terence Blacker, Literary Review, April 2007, p. 39,
      Posing as [Henry] Root, a wildly right-wing wet-fish merchant, Donaldson wrote to a variety of political figures and celebrities []

Usage notes

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  • Used especially in shops to distinguish it from fried fish, dried fish or salt fish.

Translations

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