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fisher

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See also: Fisher

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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From Middle English fischer, fischare, from Old English fisċere (“fisher”), from Proto-Germanic *fiskārijaz (“fisher”), equivalent to fish +‎ -er. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Fisker (“fisher”), West Frisian fisker (“fisher”), Dutch visser (“fisher”), German Low German Fisker, Fisser (“fisher”), German Fischer (“fisher”), Danish fisker (“fisher”), Swedish fiskare (“fisher”).

Noun

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fisher (plural fishers)

  1. A person who catches fish, especially for a living or for sport; a person engaging in the pastime of fishing.
    • 2021 December, The Road Ahead, Brisbane, page 43, column 1:
      The fishers who live here left for the mainland only days ago as an unseasonable October storm ravaged the islands.
    • 2025 October 21, Rose George, “‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose”, in The Guardian‎[1], archived from the original on 3 November 2025:
      Yet every fisher that Dzugan knows, and every fisher elsewhere, too, knows someone who has died at sea or had a near miss. […] But they are also the reasons for the safety campaigns, for the constant and valiant attempts to persuade fishers to wear lifejackets at work, to figure out how to get someone overboard back on the vessel, to carry ladders or gaffers that someone can grab on to.
Usage notes
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Traditionally less common than fisherman, "fisher" is gaining in use as a more gender-inclusive alternative.

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Etymology 2

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A fisher tagged, in a cage

From French fichet (“polecat pelt”), probably from Dutch visse (“nasty”); modified by folk etymology to resemble Etymology 1.

Noun

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fisher (plural fishers)

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
  1. A North American marten-like mammal (Pekania pennanti), that has thick brown fur.
    • 1969, Rutherford George Montgomery, The Living Wilderness‎[2], page 13:
      In many ways the fisher resembles the pine marten, possessing many of the marten's tricks and manners.
    • 1998, Thomas E. Kucera, American Marten, Fisher, Lynx, and Wolverine: Survey Methods for Their Detection‎[3], page 62:
      In the southeastern United States, Krohn et al. (1994) hypothesize that the inverse relationship between captures of fishers and martens by commercial trappers may result from an interaction between competitive displacement of marten by fisher and the avoidance of areas with deep and frequent snowfalls by fishers but not martens.
    • 2003, Cynthia J. Zabel, Robert G. Anthony, Mammal Community Dynamics, page 207:
      The term "forest carnivores" denotes a smaller group of four species - the marten, fisher, lynx, and wolverine - and is only marginally descriptive, inasmuch as it excludes many carnivores that live in forests, and includes the wolverine, which can thrive in the complete absence of trees.
  2. Fur of specimens of species Pekania pennanti.
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