poor fish
1
9.9
- noun
- Offensive
:
tonto
- She felt like a poor fish when she realized how easily she had been tricked.
Examples
-
All that poor fish had been doing was eating and pooping.
Blog text (4) -
Everyone thought he was a poor fish for believing that story without question.
-
Don't be such a poor fish; ask questions to understand things better.
Synonyms
30
1.1
A person who is not very smart and often makes bad choices
21
7.3
A person who is not very smart and trusts people easily
15
8.8
A person who is not very smart or who acts without thinking
5
7.8
A person who is slow to understand things
1
9.9
A person who is foolish or silly and makes simple mistakes
1
9.9
A person who is not very smart
1
9.9
A person who is not very smart
A person who behaves in a silly way
A person who is not very smart
Antonyms
How Gullible
Surface Forms
Morphology
poor + fish
A B1 learner who knows 'poor' would likely infer pity or misfortune, so they could guess the phrase refers to a pitiable person. However 'fish' does not clearly encode 'naïve' or 'easily duped' in a compositional way, and the specific colloquial sense is metaphorical and somewhat idiomatic, so the full meaning is not fully predictable without exposure.
Etymology
Poor fish may come from the image of a small, sad fish that looks weak and helpless. Here poor shows pity and fish was once used for a weak person, so poor fish came to mean 'someone simple or easily tricked'.