Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

sleep with the fishes

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.41 in modern English

Syllables: sleep- with- the -fish-es
IPA

35

Scrabble Score

18

Letters

5

Syllables

9

Unique Chars

Meaning

verb

To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water.

Example Sentences

"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 […]”"

Etymology

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.

Inflected Forms

sleeps with the fishes (present, singular) sleeping with the fishes (participle, present) slept with the fishes (participle, past) slept with the fishes (past)

Phrases

Davy Jones's Locker with the Lord

Frequently Paired Words

Davy Jones's Locker seabed with the Lord

Questions

What does sleep with the fishes mean?: To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water.
Where does sleep with the fishes come from?: 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.

How to pronounce sleep with the fishes

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