fetching

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛtʃɪŋ

Etymology 1

From fetch +‎ -ing.

Adjective

fetching (comparative more fetching, superlative most fetching)

1. Attractive; pleasant to regard.
   • 2000, Bill Bryson, chapter 1, in In a Sunburned Country, page 11:

     I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention.

   • 2015, Nancy Jo Sales, “Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse””, in Vanity Fair^[1]:

     “The men in this town have a serious case of pussy affluenza,” says Amy Watanabe, 28, the fetching, tattooed owner of Sake Bar Satsko, a lively izakaya in New York’s East Village.

Translations

Attractive; pleasant to regard

• Bulgarian: привлекателен (bg) (privlekatelen), очарователен (bg) (očarovatelen)

• Russian: привлека́тельный (ru) m (privlekátelʹnyj)

Verb

fetching

1. present participle of fetch
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 6, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     She was so mad she wouldn't speak to me for quite a spell, but at last I coaxed her into going up to Miss Emmeline's room and fetching down a tintype of the missing Deacon man.

Etymology 2

From Middle English fetchynge, fecchynge, faching, fettynge, equivalent to fetch +‎ -ing.

Noun

fetching (plural fetchings)

1. The act by which something is fetched.
   • 1834, Evidence on drunkenness: presented to the House of Commons

     These lumpers were also in the habit of inducing their men during the week to send to their pay-house for fetchings of drink, besides the money they were compelled to spend on Saturday night.