Phish

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Dr. Goodword
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Phish

Postby Dr. Goodword » Mon Aug 29, 2022 7:27 pm

• phish •


Pronunciation: fish • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb

Meaning: To attempt to obtain by deceit over the Internet confidential information that suffices to defraud someone or some organization.

Notes: This word is a concoction (as opposed to a grammatical derivation) that has crept into the language via the back door. It appears today in several dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, grandfather of them all. The present participle, phishing, is used for an action noun and adjective, but the personal noun, phisher, is afoot on the Internet.

In Play: The most common way of getting a password is phishing, using a fake logo or a well-known e-mail return address. Fishing can be legal or illegal, but phishing is always illegal: "Margherita wondered where her husband was going; was he saying, 'I'm going fishing' or 'I'm going phishing'?" It is rarely successful, but the results can be devastating: "The company lost millions of contacts including credit card numbers as a result of a phishing expedition."

Word History: Today's Good Word was concocted by analogy with pharming "changing the genes of a plant or animal to produce medicine" and phreaking "Illegally using the telephone without paying". So, it is simply a cute misspelling of a figurative use of fish. Fish is the Germanic rendition of Proto-Indo-European pisk- "fish", seen also in German Fisch, Dutch vis, Danish and Norwegian fisk, Italian pesce, French pêcher "to fish", Latin piscis, Breton pesk, Irish iasg, and Welsh pysgod. (Now let's thank Susan Maynard for alerting us to today's very topical Good Word and the criminal activity it refers to.)
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David Myer
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Re: Phish

Postby David Myer » Tue Aug 30, 2022 3:03 am

I wonder if it is known who exactly devised it, when, and how it was first used?

bnjtokyo
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Re: Phish

Postby bnjtokyo » Tue Aug 30, 2022 8:30 am

I'm not sure, but it appears the letters "phish" were first used as the name of a band in 1983 at the University of Vermont. It seems to have spawned a series of words using "ph" instead "f," things like "the pharmers' almanack," "phan" and "phascinating." Since the TCP/IP was adopted in January of 1983 and computer scientists began building a "network of networks" shortly thereafter, it seems to me that 1983 is a bit early for the name of this band to be applied to the practice of using the internet to try to obtain confidential information with bogus email. So I think first use of "phish" as defined here must post date the formation of the band.

David Myer
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Re: Phish

Postby David Myer » Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:04 am

Excellent, bnj. Well researched and very helpful.

I remember at school being given a Physics assignment for homework. I was an indolent and slightly irritating young person, so I labelled the project 'Fizzix assignment' and duly submitted it. The teacher, who I had deduced was a man of limited humour, returned the work two days later with an appropriate low mark and the comment "Very phunny".

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Re: Phish

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Aug 31, 2022 7:21 pm

Love the story. :D

David Myer
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Re: Phish

Postby David Myer » Thu Sep 01, 2022 7:26 am

I think you must be right again, bnj. Internet scamming is surely post 1983. But your reference to the band piqued my interest and I have now enjoyed a Youtube clip of a recent concert by this 40 year old band. Others might enjoy it too but of course when it comes to rock music, I haven't listened to anything since about 1967, so probably the whole world knows about Phish already. I would be interested to read what my friend Philip Hudson thinks of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qANMa ... nnel=Phish


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