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From Middle English fecchen, from Old English feċċan, fæċċan(to fetch). In one view, an alteration of fetian, fatian ("to fetch, marry"; whence also English fet), from Proto-Germanic *fatōną, *fatjaną(to fetch), from Proto-Indo-European *ped-(foot).



fetch (third-person singular simple present fetches, present participle fetching, simple past and past participle fetched)

  1. To retrieve; to bear towards; to go and get.
    • Bible, 1 Kings xvii. 11, 12
    • 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
    • Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859)
      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 Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).
    If you put some new tyres on it, and clean it up a bit, the car should fetch about $5,000
  3. (nautical) To bring or get within reach by going; to reach; to arrive at; to attain; to reach by sailing.
    to fetch headway or sternway
    • George Chapman (1559-1634)
      Meantime flew our ships, and straight we fetched / The siren's isle.
  4. (intransitive) To bring oneself; to make headway; to veer; as, to fetch about; to fetch to windward.
  5. (rare, literary) To take (a breath), to heave (a sigh)
  6. To cause to come; to bring to a particular state.
    • William Barnes (1801-1886)
      They couldn't fetch the butter in the churn.
  7. (obsolete) To recall from a swoon; to revive; sometimes with to.
    to fetch a man to
  8. To reduce; to throw.
    • Robert South (1634–1716)
  9. To bring to accomplishment; to achieve; to make; to perform, with certain objects.
    to fetch a compass;  to fetch a leap
  10. (nautical, transitive) To make (a pump) draw water by pouring water into the top and working the handle.


Derived terms[edit]


fetch (plural fetches)

  1. The object of fetching; the source and origin of attraction; a force, quality or propensity which is attracting eg., in a given attribute of person, place, object, principle, etc.
  2. A stratagem by which a thing is indirectly brought to pass, or by which one thing seems intended and another is done; a trick; an artifice.
    • 1665, Robert South, "Jesus of Nazareth proved the true and only promised Messiah", in Twelve Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions, Volume 3, 6th Edition, 1727
      Every little fetch of wit and criticism.
  3. The apparition of a living person; a wraith; one's double (seeing it is supposed to be a sign that one is fey or fated to die)
  4. (computing) The act of fetching data.
    a fetch from a cache

Derived terms[edit]