catfish

Catfish are fish of the orders Siluriformes or Nematognathi, so named because their distinctive barbels (a type of sensory organ) resemble a cat’s whiskers. The name dates to at least 1612, when John Smith records it in his description of the colony of Virginia:

Of fish we were best acquainted with Sturgeon, Grampus, Porpus, Seales, Stingraies, whose tailes are very dangerous. Brettes, mullets, white Salmonds, Trowts, Soles, Plaice, Herrings, Conyfish, Rockfish, Eeles, Lampreyes, Catfish, Shades, Pearch of 3 sorts, Crabs, Shrimps, Creuises, Oysters, Cocles and Muscles.

But catfish acquired a slang sense in 2010 meaning a person who uses a false online persona to deceive, especially in an online relationship. The slang term comes from the 2010 documentary film Catfish, which follows a man, Nev Schulman, who engages in an online relationship with a woman, Megan. It turns out that Megan does not exist, and her online persona was created by another woman, Angela. In the film, Angela’s husband, Vince, describes his wife as a catfish, because purveyors of live cod supposedly included a catfish in the tank to keep the cod lively and active during shipment. (Accounts of this supposed practice date to 1912.) From a transcript of the film:

The catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life, and they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh.

The film was shown at the Sundance film festival in January 2010 and entered into wider distribution by that September. But Urbandictionary.com had a post of the slang sense dated 22 July 2010. (The post is no longer on the site but is documented by the Oxford English Dictionary and Green’s Dictionary of Slang). A post to Urbandictionary.com of 2 September 2010 reads:

catfish

someone who pretends to be someone they are not online to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.

From the 2010 movie Catfish

Many guys have multiple accounts on facebook because they are catfishes

Urbandictionary.com also has entries from the early 2000s that use the term for various types of male pick-up artists, relying on a metaphor of catfish as bottom feeders. If these senses had wider currency, they may have influenced the adoption and spread of the online deceiver sense, although the 2010 film is clearly the primary locus of origin.

Sources:

Dexxe, Urbandictionary.com, 2 September 2010.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. catfish, n.

Joost, Henry and Ariel Schulman, dir. Catfish (film), Universal Pictures, 2010. IMDB.com.

Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989 & additional sense, 2023, catfish, n.; third edition, December 2023, catfish, v., catfishing, n.

Smith, John. A Map of Virginia with a Description of Covntrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion. Oxford: Joseph Barnes, 1612, 15. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.

Photo credit: US Army Corps of Engineers, before 2005. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.