Fish, Fish, Fishes

What's the difference?

One of my favorite oddities of the English language is that fish, fish, and fishes each have a different use and meaning. The many meanings of fish and fishes can be confusing, so I have written a short how-to guide.

The singular fish refers to an individual animal, such as the giant great white shark in “Jaws”. Jaws is one individual, so we would use fish in that case. The plural fish refers to multiple individuals of the same type or species. If “Jaws” had featured an entire pack of ravenous sharks (although in real life they don’t act like that, more on that to come), we would use the plural fish. Fishes is also plural, but refers to an assemblage of multiple species or kinds of fish. A good fish tank, brimming with a dazzling array of species, is an opportunity to use fishes. See an illustrated summary below.

Above: A guide to using fish, fish, and fishes. Note that fish and fishes are both plural, are used to refer to one or multiple kinds of fishes. Drawings by Jack Stack based on photos of a common goldfish and an angelfish from Wikipedia Commons.

Thank you so much for reading. Please share this article with anyone who would find it useful, and I hope you have a wonderful day.