fishgirl

From fish +‎ girl.

fishgirl (plural fishgirls)

1. A girl who catches, prepares, or sells fish.

   Coordinate terms: fishboy, fishwoman

   • 1836, Orville Dewey, chapter VIII, in The Old World and the New; or, A Journal of Reflections and Observations Made on a Tour in Europe. […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 163:

     The next new and characteristic objects that presented themselves, as we went up the quay, were the fishwomen, or fishgirls rather—for they were all young—coming down with their small nets and net frames on their shoulders, looking as stout and resolute as men; […]

   • 1883, Fishwives’ and Fishgirls’ Costumes. A Souvenir of the Fisheries Exhihition, 1883. […]‎^[1], London: Samuel Miller, […], →OCLC
   • 1939 July, Dylan Thomas, “Old Garbo”, in Robert Herring, editor, Life and Letters To-day, volume 22, number 23, London: […] The Brendin Publishing Company […], →OCLC, page 73:

     You can see the sailors knitting there. And the old fishgirls in the Jersey.

   • 1996, Michael Baldwin, “Blois. Saturday the Twenty-Seventh of July, 1792”, in The First Mrs Wordsworth, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, book 2 (Birthdays and Death Days), page 260:

     They would have gone out riding or to place bets, sometimes with the ration money, or been unavoidably delayed watching their friend Jean-Jacques Vallon sever fishgirls at the elbow or shorten carters below the knee.

2. A mermaid.

   Coordinate term: fishboy

   • 1989 July, Fred Saberhagen, “Prologue”, in Farslayer’s Story (Lost Swords; 4), New York, N.Y.: Tor Fantasy, →ISBN, page 2:

     According to her own best calculation, Black Pearl had recently turned eighteen years of age, at the beginning of the summer. She knew, therefore, that she had not very many years of life remaining. Mermaids, fishgirls, of her age never did.

   • 1997, Peter Levi, chapter 7, in Horace: A Life, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, published 1998, →ISBN, page 156:

     The Nereids have become sea-nymphs, given a fish’s tail they would be mermaids, as one may see them represented, though mermaids or fishgirls exist in the traditional undatable art of the Inuit, who I think invented them.

   • 1998, Richard Calder, “Lost in Afric”, in Frenzetta: A Novel of the Future, London: Orbit, →ISBN, page 152:

     [T]hough the bikini-clad fishgirls looked on, admiringly, prone on platter-like sun beds, as if about to provide their confabulated cousins with a ‘fruits of the sea’ lunchtime buffet, I knew from experience that those mermaids’ sexual interests were focused entirely on the human fishermen whom they lured to their deaths in the Straits of Gibraltar; […]

   • 2015 August, Helen McClory, “Sexually Frustrated Mermaids”, in On the Edges of Vision: Stories, Plano, Tex.: Queen’s Ferry Press, →ISBN, page 125:

     Fantasies of mermaids with warm, green-fringed caves. Decorous fantasies of both, in all combinations, with all manner of parts: those that are absent, and parts that are new, known only to the minds of desperate dreaming fishgirls.

   • 2020 February 4, Liz Braswell, “The Lost Boys”, in Straight On Till Morning (A Twisted Tale; 8), New York, N.Y.: Disney • Hyperion, →ISBN:

     “Sometimes when he’s down he goes to Mermaid Lagoon,” Cubby said, rolling his eyes. “Talks with the fishgirls.”