"sleep with the fishes" meaning in English

See sleep with the fishes in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-sleep with the fishes.ogg [Australia] Forms: sleeps with the fishes [present, singular, third-person], sleeping with the fishes [participle, present], slept with the fishes [participle, past], slept with the fishes [past]
Etymology: Earliest known record 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. Head templates: {{en-verb|sleep<,,slept> with the fishes}} sleep with the fishes (third-person singular simple present sleeps with the fishes, present participle sleeping with the fishes, simple past and past participle slept with the fishes)
  1. (idiomatic) To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water. Wikipedia link: The Godfather Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): Death

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for sleep with the fishes meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Earliest known record 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.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sleeps with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sleeping with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "slept with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "slept with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "sleep<,,slept> with the fishes"
      },
      "expansion": "sleep with the fishes (third-person singular simple present sleeps with the fishes, present participle sleeping with the fishes, simple past and past participle slept with the fishes)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Death",
          "orig": "en:Death",
          "parents": [
            "Body",
            "Life",
            "Human",
            "Nature",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1833 March, “The Three Humpbacks ; or, the Bridge of Bagdad”, in The Lady's Magazine and Museum, page 105",
          "text": "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 […]”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water."
      ],
      "id": "en-sleep_with_the_fishes-en-verb-FKt8A6mP",
      "links": [
        [
          "corpse",
          "corpse"
        ],
        [
          "dispose",
          "dispose"
        ],
        [
          "water",
          "water"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Godfather"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-sleep with the fishes.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/92/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "sleep with the fishes"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Earliest known record 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.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "sleeps with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "sleeping with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "slept with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "slept with the fishes",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "sleep<,,slept> with the fishes"
      },
      "expansion": "sleep with the fishes (third-person singular simple present sleeps with the fishes, present participle sleeping with the fishes, simple past and past participle slept with the fishes)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "en:Death"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1833 March, “The Three Humpbacks ; or, the Bridge of Bagdad”, in The Lady's Magazine and Museum, page 105",
          "text": "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 […]”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "corpse",
          "corpse"
        ],
        [
          "dispose",
          "dispose"
        ],
        [
          "water",
          "water"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To be dead, with one's corpse disposed of in a body of water."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "The Godfather"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-sleep with the fishes.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/9/92/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/En-au-sleep_with_the_fishes.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "sleep with the fishes"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.