Main meanings of fetch in English

: fetch¹ fetch²

fetch¹

Pronunciation /fɛtʃ/

See synonyms for fetch

Translate fetch into Spanish

verb

[with object]

1Go for and then bring back (someone or something) for someone.
‘he ran to fetch help’
- ‘she fetched me a cup of tea’
- ‘We trained him to fetch it and bring it back repeatedly.’
- ‘They give you a plastic slate with a number; you drive up, and the bags are fetched from a conveyor belt that carries big numbered tubs.’
- ‘He bends down and tosses a stick to Baxter, who obligingly fetches it and brings it back.’
- ‘It took me a while to fetch the car and bring it up to the church to get my parents.’
- ‘I fetched my guitar and led in a quick rendition of This Land Is Your Land.’
- ‘In the afternoon, one guest said, the bride was fetched and brought to the party.’
- ‘Mr Tembani then told me he would personally fetch the parcel and deliver it to my house.’
- ‘The boys' contribution is mainly to collect wood and sometimes fetch water.’
- ‘As she conducts household errands, fetching apples or replating candlesticks, she seeks ‘her own secret’.’
- ‘So he called a servant to fetch a candle and led the way upstairs, the stranger following without effort despite his burden.’
- ‘In the dry season, the women would fetch it and carry it home in jars on their heads, or from dirty tanks which gave us diseases.’
- ‘I had a need to go fetch his last belongings and bring them home to my house to wash them.’
- ‘To get my birth certificate in my Dutch home town, I have to ask my mother to mobilize my 80-year old uncle, the last family member to live in this city, so he can fetch it in person.’
- ‘One moment of reality that was to haunt me for a long time was what happened when I went to fetch Stephen's death certificate at the Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield, where he had died.’
- ‘Lee was left to play by himself when his cousins left the house and his mother went to fetch a cup of tea for Lee's great-grandmother, Margaret.’
- ‘Cox goes to fetch a cup of tea and returns with more numbers.’
- ‘Once we reached the library, we three signed in, and Kelsey surreptitiously drifted away, fetching the large tome and bringing it to the room where we were doing our shift.’
- ‘After a breakfast of pasta and 3 cups of tea, I went to the garage to fetch my bike only to find my Dad, who looked more nervous than me, frantically pumping up my tyres.’
- ‘Luckily, I had a boy with me, who I sent to fetch a morgue vehicle to bring them to the city for proper burial.’
- ‘Can you imagine a moggie carrying Sunday papers with all those supplements, or fetching letters without scratching them to shreds?’
get, go and get, go for, call for, summon, pick up, collect, bring, carry, deliver, convey, ferry, transport
View synonyms
1. 1.1 archaic Bring forth (blood or tears)
  ‘kind offers fetched tears from me’
  ‘I likewise promise that I shall not be obliged to fetch blood with the scourge.’
  ‘His voice was musical and strong, which he managed in such a manner as, one while, to make soft impressions on the heart, and fetch tears from the eyes.’
2. 1.2 archaic Take a (breath); heave (a sigh).
  ‘Men of wisdom fetch their breath up from deep inside and below, while others breathe with their voice box alone.’
  ‘Her death took a heavy toll on Elizabeth, one observer noting, ‘I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.’’
2Achieve (a particular price) when sold.
‘the land could fetch over a million pounds’
- ‘Oil is sold wherever it can fetch the highest price.’
- ‘Second, because of that lessened demand, the oil they do sell fetches a lower price.’
- ‘The words that the verses of the Qur'an should not be sold for a paltry price do not mean that they can be sold if they fetch a high price.’
- ‘Land like this is fetching significant prices which does not compare with the rental income.’
- ‘Hong Kong share prices closed off their lows as property stocks rebounded in late trade on hopes that next week's government land auction will fetch high prices and trigger a rally in the sector.’
- ‘With the luxury market now soaring, Ng is not resting on his laurels and says he expects a duplex on the 79th and 80th floors to fetch an even higher price.’
- ‘Later this month two retail units on Mainguard Street will go to auction and are expected to fetch a combined price of around €1 million.’
- ‘It is not that the fish is set to fetch a higher price.’
- ‘Mr. Zhang says he is confident that his will fetch the highest prices.’
- ‘It will surely fetch a better price with new gutters, tiles, gates, fences, sand-blasted and pointed.’
- ‘If you are ready to sell now the rising demand for Teps means that you are likely to be able to fetch a higher price than you could a few years ago.’
- ‘All such people do is to buy commodities in the expectation that they will fetch a higher price later.’
- ‘The price of vineyard land is not directly proportional to the price fetched by grapes grown on it, however.’
- ‘In the tourist shops of Toraja heirlooms fetch high prices as objets d' art, and land too is sometimes sold for government projects or tourist developments.’
- ‘In today's market yesterday's playthings fetch serious prices and last year was a bumper year for toys and related ephemera.’
- ‘It is a collective wish of the people here that if this district is brought on the tourist map, it is bound to fetch fortunes for the state in general and the residents of Kupwara district in particular.’
- ‘The collection is expected to fetch a total of about £25 million in a landmark sale lasting two days, on February 19 and 20.’
- ‘A similar load of peaches or lychees could easily fetch double that.’
- ‘Also, the companies offered for sale would fetch a lower kitty, much below expectations.’
- ‘Today, crude oil trades for around $30 a barrel while the same quantity of blood fetches $20,000.’
sell for, bring in, raise, realize, yield, make, earn, command, cost, be priced at, come to, amount to
View synonyms
3 informal with two objects Inflict (a blow or slap) on (someone)
- ‘that brute Cullam fetched him a wallop’
- ‘He has wounded him in the small of the back, as the gesture of the beast indicates, and running up behind him, wheels about to fetch a blow.’
- ‘The best she could do was to fetch a slap at tall Charley's head.’
- ‘And the man took a club, came up to them and aimed at the lion's head and fetched him a wallop.’
- ‘One of the children, not understanding the kneeling order, and standing up, the mother fetched her a slap on the ear, crying, ‘Drat it, Jane, kneel down.’’
4 informal, dated Cause great interest or delight in (someone)
- ‘that air of his always fetches women’
- ‘I find anything in the way of politics fetches women.’
- ‘Her song has something that fetches an audience.’

noun

1The distance travelled by wind or waves across open water.
‘Wave disturbance was estimated by measuring the fetch for wave height on maps as the width of the river perpendicular to the center of the riverbank site.’
- ‘Waves with a fetch of thousands of miles come to land here, in a crashing fury some days, or gently, as today.’
- ‘Flow rates over the substratum and around submerged objects depend on wind strength and fetch, and in streams, on stream gradients and hydraulic input.’
- ‘The fetch of the Trade winds would weaken in their equator-ward extent.’
1. 1.1The distance a vessel must sail to reach open water.
  ‘He later demonstrated experimentally that the action of even sluggish winds over open fetches of water produces long avenues of counter-rotating eddies with bands of sinking water between them.’
  ‘For an area of sea so protected from the winds and enormous fetches of the Atlantic or Pacific, the sheer number of wrecks at first seems disproportionate.’
2 archaic A stratagem or trick.
‘It is no ingenious fetches of argument that we want.’
- ‘In ‘the wily fetches of lawyers,’ we see the handiwork of our Speaker, whose zeal in Richard's cause never relaxed until the Parliament had exhausted every resource.’

Phrases

fetch and carry

Perform a succession of menial tasks for someone as if one was their servant.
‘For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.’
- ‘This week, the PM meets with the new resident of the White House, and will do his best to show he can fetch and carry.’
- ‘Lord Duvalier is certainly able to fetch and carry for Veronique.’
- ‘The comments by some Madrid players have been clearly self-serving (none of them want to fetch and carry - the role they see for Vieira) and contradictory.’

Phrasal Verbs

fetch up

British

informal

Arrive or come to rest somewhere, typically by accident or unintentionally.
- ‘all four of them fetched up in the saloon bar of the Rose and Crown’
- ‘Without a pitch of their own, teams would fetch up in a farmer's field to start a game and sometimes have to finish it in another field up the road.’
- ‘Always on the run from creditors, the baron fetched up in Naples a year before Hamilton arrived.’
- ‘A classically trained viola player, John Cale took career advice from Bernstein and Copland before fetching up at the Factory with Warhol, Nico and Lou Reed.’
- ‘These people seem to travel constantly, fetching up at the key events that punctuate the shifting circuit.’
- ‘Timothy Spall fetches up as a blithering British expatriate in regulation grubby white suit, on hand to instruct Tom - and us - about what's supposed to be going on.’
- ‘After a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt he eventually fetches up in New York, where he makes good as an art dealer and critic while experimenting with booze, pills and sex.’
- ‘One's envy increases when he fetches up at Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read English.’
- ‘Houllier fetches up at Lyon where he inherits the most eye-catching team in Europe.’
- ‘It was here that Mary Salomé (mother of James and John), Mary Jacobé (sister of the Virgin) and an A list of other early-Christian celebrities fetched up after being set adrift in a boat from Palestine.’
- ‘He liked to work in sequence, creating a kind of photographic flick book of the places he fetched up in and somehow endowing his work with a sense of restless narrative.’
- ‘After two hours of dodge-and-pray, we fetched up beneath a rocky overhang and collapsed.’
- ‘A rumbustious English beachcomber, Barker, has fetched up on its shores after half a lifetime at sea.’
- ‘Instead, given their abject beginning to the season, they fetched up in Milan in an anxious state looking only for a performance.’
- ‘Many of the musical types who have recently chosen to make their home in Montreal have an interesting story to tell as to how and why they fetched up there.’
- ‘With a frightful inevitability I fetched up in an empty disabled space right by the loudspeakers outside the new store.’
- ‘After Rio, he fetched up in Valparaiso in Chile and spent a day in a school telling children about his life and how rowing became part of it.’
- ‘They even managed to tempt their father into the studio, to play some slide on a track that has fetched up on the new album as Voices.’
- ‘One night, Chesnutt fetched up at a party and started singing a couple of his songs.’
- ‘There was no way any of the international lads could have gone but some of the others could easily have fetched up there.’
- ‘We fetched up at the bottom of the spur little better than a mob, but still with our wounded.’

Origin

Old English fecc(e)an, variant of fetian, probably related to fatian ‘grasp’, of Germanic origin and related to German fassen.