fish

   Used of a person in colloquial speech since the eighteenth century, especially in phrases like ‘an odd fish’, ‘a queer fish’. The word was sometimes specifically applied to a sailor. In modern American slang ‘fish’ can have many different meanings, ranging from a newly arrived inmate at a prison to a sucker, or one easily ‘caught’. Applied to a woman by homosexual speakers, ‘fish’ means that she is heterosexual. In student slang ‘a fish’ is a promiscuous woman. The vocative meaning of ‘fish’ will therefore vary greatly according to the speaker. A typical vocative expression would be ‘you poor fish’, implying that the hearer was slightly stupid.