Meanings
present singular third person sleeps with the fishes · participle present sleeping with the fishes · participle past slept with the fishes · past slept with the fishes
- idiomaticTo be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water.
The porter […] opened his sack, and pitched the corpse into the river, and ran back to receive the rest of his pay “ It is done,” said he, laughing ; “ Your man sleeps with the fishes of the Tigris by this time […]”
1833 March, “The Three Humpbacks ; or, the Bridge of Bagdad”, in The Lady's Magazine and Museum, page 105
Origin
The idea of sleeping with fishes first appears in Homer's Iliad (21), in which Achilles threatens (and kills) Lycaon (son of Priam), who will 'sleep with the fishes', in some translations. There was emphasis on the brutality of this method because it meant the body would remain forever unburied akin to an animal (fish). The earliest known exact phrase is from 1833, see the quotation below. The phrase was popularized in the motion picture The Godfather (1972). The 1969 book on which the movie was based includes a large, dead fish wrapped in a bulletproof vest being used to signify that a character is "sleeping on the bottom of the ocean", but not the phrase.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
sleep with the fishes. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sleep%20with%20the%20fishes
“sleep with the fishes.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sleep%20with%20the%20fishes. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sleep with the fishes,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sleep%20with%20the%20fishes.
Source: sleep with the fishes on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.