English edit

Etymology edit

From fisher +‎ -ette.

Noun edit

fisherette (plural fisherettes)

  1. (chiefly dated) A female fisher (one who catches fish).
    • 1913, Hearst’s Magazine, page 677:
      If you are a fisherman or a “fisherette” you may write to one of the advertisers in The New Department for a fly-book.
    • 1918 July 20, The Brantford Daily Expositor, Brantford, Ont., page nine:
      Introducing the Fisherette / A NEW EXPERIMENT IN WAR WORK FOR WOMEN—PLUCKY NOVA SCOTIANS TAKE TO FISH CLEANING IN OIL-SKINS AND SOU’WESTERS [] And here is where the fisherette comes in! If women can help on the farms, in the factories, in industries of every kind, they are surely fitted to take their places by the fishermen, and if they cannot go out in dories to catch the precious sea food, they can at least have a share in handling it on shore.
    • 1938 September 23, The Upland News[1], volume XLIV, number 43, Upland, Calif.:
      James E. Goodban, local authority on deep sea fishing, was invited by Mr. Van Dorin to join the party and under his and Mr. Van Dorin’s directions, the visiting fishermen—and fisherettes — were successful in landing a fine catch of albacore.
    • 1942, O[nnie] Warren Smith, Musings of an Angler, New York, N.Y.: A. S. Barnes & Company, page 96:
      But, somehow, I felt a bit self-conscious, embarrassed almost as though I had caught some young angler kissing a fisherette.
    • 1943 February 27, The Billboard, page 104:
      ARNOLD KENT and MARINA GOYA, interpretative dancers are respectively a stowaway and a sailorette on a sailboat which, strangely enough, is manned by young, romantic gals. To the strains of a romantic tune, the sailorettes go thru the undulating body motions of a hula. The title: Fisherettes Catch.
    • 1950, Alabama Conservation, page 16:
      A fisherette from Berry, Miss Mildred Cannon, helped Wiley Cannon, also of Berry, and J. W. Fulmer, of Bankston, bring in a string of 41 bream and bass.
    • 1950, The Electrical Workers’ Journal, page 31:
      Playful Porpoise leaps into air to snatch food from pretty fisherettes at the “Theater of the Sea.”
    • 1951 August 13, “Bayou”, “Gulf States Market: Commercial Production Off Due To Fishing Rodeo — Seasonal Hard Crab Production Heavy—New Packaging Ideas For Fishery Products”, in The Canning Trade: The Business Journal of the Canning and Allied Industries, volume 74, number 4, page 20:
      The production of seafood was somewhat handicapped this past week by the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo which took place off the coast of Dauphin Island at the entrance to Mobile Bay on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this past week and in which fifteen hundred fishermen and fisherettes participated and it was “the biggest and best” in years.
    • 1958, Louisiana Conservationist, page 16:
      Bob Brownlee won the title of “best fisherman” and “best fisherette” went to Mrs. Florence Patrick.
    • 1966, Port of Mobile, page 10:
      Just a nice boat ride to the east, on Dauphin Island the following weekend, 1,581 fishermen and fisherettes signed up as contestants for a whopping $15,000 in prizes in the Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo.
    • 1980, The Nebraskaland Magazine Book of Collector Prints, page 4:
      With Nebraska Fishermen and Fisherettes