Etymology

triggerfish

trig·ger·fish
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Today it means: Any of several brightly coloured fish, of the family Balistidae, that inhabit tropical reefs and have an erectile spine on the dorsal fin. Full definition →

English fish ← Middle English fisch ← Old English fisċ
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The story

  1. Englishtrigger
  2. Proto-Indo-European*péysks
  3. Proto-Germanic*fiskaz
  4. Proto-West Germanic*fisk
  5. Old Englishfisċ
  6. Middle Englishfisch
  7. Englishfish
  8. English todaytriggerfish

From trigger + fish. First attested in the 1840s.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.