Quick, what’s the plural of fish? Is it “fish” or “fishes”?
Either way you’re wrong. Or right, I guess, if you’re one of those insufferable glass-is-half-full people.
Most reference books say “fish” is the more common and accepted form. Same goes for the OG Internet. It’s unclear if the R&B band The Internet has weighed in on the issue.
The Grammarist, a reasonably trustworthy voice online among a large school of reasonably untrustworthy voices online, parallels the explanation of many … “Fish can be a plural form and singular form and is used when referring to a single group or collection of a specific species of fish. Fishes is a more scientific use when referring to types of fish in a group or collection.”
And, despite having all the stylistic grace of an unedited ChatGPT response, that’s a pretty useful way to think about it.
Do the fish look the same? Then they’re “fish”. Do they look different? Well, that could just be sexual dimorphism. Are you a qualified marine biologist? Well, unless you are, you’ve got no reason to use “fishes.” Okay, okay, I guess if you go to the aquarium, where the fish have been identified by a qualified marine biologist, then you’re entitled to refer to the fish therein as fishes. The same probably goes at the fish market. But don’t look so smug about it. “Two fish” was good enough for Dr. Seuss. If that doesn’t tip the scales in fish’s favor, I don’t know what will.
Look, I can be as pedantic as the next person, but language rules — especially usage rules over time — come down to consensus. So, instead of appealing to authorities and children’s authors, let’s look at what the masses have to say about this.
Enter Google Ngram Viewer. This tool searches all the scanned text in Google Books. There are lots of fancy ways to use it, but let’s just try a simple search of “two fish” versus “one fish.” Here’s what I got.
Well, well, well. That’s quite a different story, isn’t it? Apparently “fishes” declined in printed usage across the last two centuries as the humble “fish” swimming steadily upward through the ranks. The trend continued until the second decade of the current century when, for whatever reason, use of “fishes” skyrocketed like a thing prone to skyrocketing.
Maybe that’s because everyone started looking it up on the internet. Maybe it’s because there was in increase in the number of qualified marine biologists writing or editing books. Regardless, the more technical, scientific form appears to be in vogue these days.
But you know what? It doesn’t really matter. You hear both forms of the word all the time. Moreover, unlike the case with sheep, moose, deer, and a host of ungulates, you don’t sound like a lunatic when you add an S sound to the end of fish.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, you’re free to take a deep dive on more complex issues like the plural of “octopus” and the non-fish status of qualified marine animals like “starfish” and “jellyfish.”
Indeed, there are other fish in the sea.
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