it's fishy
it's dubious
TRANSLATION
fishy = verdächtig, zweifelhaft, suspekt, faul --- GOOGLE INDEX fishy: approximately 400,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
---
So something is clearly FISHY here and one way or another Google should fix it.
(Forbes magazine)
---
The former senator cited some statistics on Medicare estimates that turned out to be rather FISHY.
(Washington Post)
So something is clearly FISHY here and one way or another Google should fix it.
(Forbes magazine)
---
The former senator cited some statistics on Medicare estimates that turned out to be rather FISHY.
(Washington Post)
Did you
know?
fishy
adjective
- odd or suspicious
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
Imagine for a moment there is an odd smell in your house, but you are unable to pinpoint it. You walk around sniffing, trying to find the source. The aroma eventually leads you to the rubbish bin where you remember you discarded the rest of your fish dinner from three days ago. Smells fishy right? Things can look, sound, or be fishy.
The figurative sense of fishy, which means suspicious, odd, doubtful, or dubious stems directly from the idea that the smell of spoiled fish immediately makes one think that something is not right. Or as Marcellos says to Horatio in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
English boasts other animal adjectives that are useful in everyday conversation by the way. While just about any animal name can be suffixed with -like to form an adjective (He has a dog-like determination), some are formed by adding -ish or -y. Most of these adjectives describe negative qualities:
- sheepish = when someone is embarrassed to have done something wrong (He just looked at me with a sheepish grin)
- waspish = aggressive, bad-tempered (He answered my questions with a waspish e-mail)
- sluggish (slug = snail) = slow, lazy (I got off to a sluggish start this morning)
- catty = unkind, spiteful (His catty remarks offended everyone in the room)
---
SYNONYMS
ambiguous, doubtful, dubious, equivocal, questionable, odd, shady, suspect, strange, suspicious
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"His excuse for being late sounds fishy to me."
adjective
- odd or suspicious
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
Imagine for a moment there is an odd smell in your house, but you are unable to pinpoint it. You walk around sniffing, trying to find the source. The aroma eventually leads you to the rubbish bin where you remember you discarded the rest of your fish dinner from three days ago. Smells fishy right? Things can look, sound, or be fishy.
The figurative sense of fishy, which means suspicious, odd, doubtful, or dubious stems directly from the idea that the smell of spoiled fish immediately makes one think that something is not right. Or as Marcellos says to Horatio in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
English boasts other animal adjectives that are useful in everyday conversation by the way. While just about any animal name can be suffixed with -like to form an adjective (He has a dog-like determination), some are formed by adding -ish or -y. Most of these adjectives describe negative qualities:
- sheepish = when someone is embarrassed to have done something wrong (He just looked at me with a sheepish grin)
- waspish = aggressive, bad-tempered (He answered my questions with a waspish e-mail)
- sluggish (slug = snail) = slow, lazy (I got off to a sluggish start this morning)
- catty = unkind, spiteful (His catty remarks offended everyone in the room)
---
SYNONYMS
ambiguous, doubtful, dubious, equivocal, questionable, odd, shady, suspect, strange, suspicious
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"His excuse for being late sounds fishy to me."
