/fɛt͡ʃ/, /fɑt͡ʃ/
OriginThe verb is derived from Middle English fecchen (“to get and bring back, fetch; to come for, get and take away; to steal; to carry away to kill; to search for; to obtain, procure”) [and other forms], from Old English feċċan, fæċċan, feccean (“to fetch, bring; to draw; to gain, take; to seek”), a variant of fetian, fatian (“to bring near, fetch; to acquire, obtain; to bring on, induce; to fetch a wife, marry”) and possibly related to Old English facian, fācian (“to acquire, obtain; to try to obtain; to get; to get to, reach”), both from Proto-Germanic *fatōną, *fatjaną (“to hold, seize; to fetch”), from Proto-Indo-European *ped- (“to step, walk; to fall, stumble”).
The English word is cognate with Dutch vatten (“to apprehend, catch; to grasp; to understand”), German fassen (“to catch, grasp; to capture, seize”), English fet (“(obsolete) to fetch”), Faroese fata (“to grasp, understand”), Danish fatte (“to grasp, understand”), Swedish fatta (“to grasp, understand”), Icelandic feta (“to go, step”), West Frisian fetsje (“to grasp”).
The noun is derived from the verb.
- ditransitive, transitiveTo retrieve; to bear towards; to go and get.
“You have to fetch some sugar in order to proceed with the recipe.”
“I'm thirsty. Can you fetch me a glass of water, please?”
“SATURNINUS: Go fetch them hither to us presently.
TITUS: Why, there they are, both baked in that pie,
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.”
- transitiveTo obtain as price or equivalent; to sell for.
“Our native horses[…] were held in small esteem, and fetched low prices.”
“My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, ”
“The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsy”
- To bring or get within reach by going; to reach; to arrive at; to attain; to reach by sailing.
“to fetch headway or sternway”
“Meantime flew our ships, and straight we fetched / The siren's isle.”
- intransitiveTo bring oneself; to make headway; to veer; as, to fetch about; to fetch to windward.
- literary, rare, transitiveTo take (a breath); to heave (a sigh).
“The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there.”
- transitiveTo cause to come; to bring to a particular state.
“They couldn't fetch the butter in the churn.”
- obsolete, transitiveTo recall from a swoon; to revive; sometimes with to.
“to fetch a man to”
“Fetching men again when they swoon.”
- transitiveTo reduce; to throw.
“The sudden trip in wrestling that fetches a man to the ground.”
- archaic, transitiveTo accomplish; to achieve; to perform, with certain objects or actions.
“to fetch a compass; to fetch a leap”
“I'll fetch a turn about the garden.”
“Ixion[…]turn'd dancer, does nothing but cut capreols, fetch friskals, and leads lavaltoes”
- transitiveTo make (a pump) draw water by pouring water into the top and working the handle.
- also, figurativelyAn act of fetching, of bringing something from a distance.
- also, figuratively, specificallyAn act of fetching data.
- The object of fetching; the source of an attraction; a force, propensity, or quality which attracts.
- An area over which wind is blowing (over water) and generating waves.
“When a fetch is close to land, this variability will alter anticipated wind directions and velocities.”
- The length of such an area; the distance a wave can travel across a body of water (without obstruction).
“From recently completed radar maps of the Brazilian Amazon I determined the shape, maximum fetch and width and orientation of all the lakes greater than 100 meters across in the floodplain […]”
“For example, a steady wind of 40-50 kilometres/hour - a Force 6 strong breeze - blowing for 12 hours over an initially calm sea and traversing a fetch of 1000 kilometres could produce a significant wa”
“Wind waves continue to grow within the fetch area, [...] A graphical wave hindcasting method by means of Wilson's fetch diagrams produced an estimate of H_(1/3) = 9.4 m and T_(1/3) = 12.3 s over the f”
- A stratagem or trick; an artifice.
“They used cunning fetches to swindle money out of the gullible.”
“Every little fetch of wit and criticism.”
“And as to your cant of living single, nobody will believe you. This is one of your fetches to avoid complying with your duty […].”
- uncountableA game played with a dog in which a person throws an object for the dog to retrieve.
- dialectalThe apparition of a living person; a person's double, the sight of which is supposedly a sign that they are fated to die soon, a doppelganger; a wraith (“a person's likeness seen just after their death; a ghost, a spectre”).
“In these dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the dece”
“I think it was a fetch. [...] Folk say a fetch is seen at its departing / From a cold house whence it shall lead a soul; / But this comes like a child-birth closing in, / And so perchance it does but ”
“Several farm maidservants meet to see their future lovers' spirits on Midsummer Eve, but see only the "fetch" or double of one of them, foretelling her death.”
Formsfetches(present, singular, third-person) · fetching(participle, present) · fetched(participle, past) · fetched(past) · fatch(alternative) · fotch(alternative) · fetches(plural)