catfish

verb

catfished; catfishing; catfishes

1

intransitive : to fish for catfish

… Bob was catfishing off a floating Ohio River dock near Eight Mile Road east of Cincinnati one early summer evening …

—Kentucky Happy Hunting Ground

2

transitive : to deceive (someone) by creating a false personal profile online

"They never actually met. She was an online thing. They'd been talking for over a year. We were all pretty sure she was catfishing him, but he was convinced she was legit and that they were in love."

—R. L. Naquin

"Heather" stopped messaging me abruptly several months after we started talking. She was a grown woman, and I never lied about how young I was. Even so, I've never been quite sure which one of us was being catfished.

—Vanessa Vitiello Uruhart

see also catfish entry 1 sense 2

catfishing noun

… this novel is timely due to recent high-profile examples of "catfishing"—where an individual creates a false online identity, often with deceptive or malicious romantic goals.

—Ryan F. Paulsen

Did you know?

For centuries, a catfish was merely a type of fish with a distinctive face. Then, in 2010, Ariel Schulman released Catfish, a documentary about his brother Nev's experiences with a woman who pretended to be someone else online. (The movie was popular enough to spawn a television show by the same title.) In the documentary, the woman's husband explained the title with an anecdote about how fishermen transporting live cod used to put catfish in with the cod on long-haul shipments to keep the desirable cod active and alert until arrival. The man implied that his wife was like those catfish, keeping the lives of others fresh and interesting.

Examples of catfish in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Blue, channel, and white cats are the only United States catfish species that have distinctly forked tails. —Ken Perrotte, Outdoor Life, 4 June 2026

Your Tinder match could be a bot, trying to catfish you. —Jennifer Jolly, USA Today, 17 Apr. 2026

According to the nanny, Banfield feared his wife would file for divorce and set up a phony account on a fetish dating website under his wife’s name to catfish and lure Ryan, 39, to the house for a consensual but violent role-play scenario. —David Matthews, New York Daily News, 3 Feb. 2026

Netflix To catfish or not to catfish — that is the question. —Kevin Jacobsen, Entertainment Weekly, 1 Feb. 2026

Word History

Etymology

derivative of catfish entry 1

First Known Use

1871, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing catfish

• blue catfish
• channel catfish
• cory catfish
• flathead catfish
• walking catfish

Rhymes for catfish

• bluefish
• codfish
• crawfish
• dogfish
• finfish
• flatfish
• goldfish
• groundfish
• kingfish
• offish
• redfish
• rockfish

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Kids Definition

catfish

noun

cat·​fish ˈkat-ˌfish 

: any of numerous usually freshwater stout-bodied fishes with large heads and long thin feelers about the mouth