Detail of a Cullercoats fishlass, from Inside the Bar, by Winslow Homer 1883
A fishwife, fish-fag[1] or fishlass is a woman who sells fish.[2] She is typically the wife of a fisherman, selling her husband's catch, but other sources of fish have been used.
Some wives and daughters of fishermen were notoriously loud and foul-mouthed, as noted in the expression, To swear like a fishwife as they sold fish in the marketplace. Among the reasons for their outspokenness were that their wares were highly perishable and lost value if not sold quickly, and the similarity of their product to that of others selling the same thing, with volume of voice or colorful language drawing customer attention. Also, managing alone while their menfolk were away fishing for extended periods made them strong and self-sufficient.[3]
In this context, the word wife means woman rather than married woman, from the Old English wif (woman).[4][5]
^E. Cobham Brewer (1898), "Billingsgate", Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, archived from the original on April 23, 2021
^Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 2008-04-27. A woman who sells fish
^Gary Taylor (1981). "Touchstone's Butterwomen". The Review of English Studies. XXXII (126). Oxford University Press: 187–193. doi:10.1093/res/XXXII.126.187.
^M. J. Hardman; Anita Taylor; Catherine Wright (2013), Making the Invisible Visible : Gender in Language, p. 85, ISBN 9781491701416
^Julia Cresswell (2014), Little Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, Oxford University Press, p. 209, ISBN 9780199683635
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