phishing

Respelling of fishing (“trying to find”). In Usenet newsgroups, cracker and pirate groups used variant spellings of phish and warez (i.e. wares) to evade scans and filters by mainstream servers policing the ARPAnet/Internet. Compare other respelling slang like phat and phreak.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfɪʃɪŋ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Homophone: fishing

• Rhymes: -ɪʃɪŋ

phishing (uncountable)

1. (computing) The malicious act of keeping a false website or sending a false e-mail with the intent of masquerading as a trustworthy entity in order to acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

   Hypernyms: spoofing; cybercrime; scam, fraud

   Hyponyms: smishing, vishing

   Holonym: social engineering

   • 2025 March 11, Sunny Yadav, “US Cities Warn of Surge in Unpaid Parking Phishing Text Scams”, in eSecurity Planet‎^[1]:

     A growing number of U.S. cities are alerting residents to a widespread phishing scam involving fraudulent text messages about unpaid parking violations.

2. The act of circumventing security with an alias.

• phish
• phisher
• spearphishing

phishing

1. present participle and gerund of phish

Unadapted borrowing from English phishing.

• IPA^(key): [ˈfɪʃɪŋk]

phishing m inan

1. phishing

• “phishing”, in Internetová jazyková příručka (in Czech), 2008–2025

Unadapted borrowing from English phishing.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiʃiŋ/, [ˈfiʃiŋ]
• Rhymes: -iʃiŋ

phishing (slang)

1. phishing

• verkkourkinta
• kalastelu

• “phishing”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[2] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 3 July 2023

Unadapted borrowing from English phishing.

• Rhymes: -iʃĩ, -iʃĩɡ
• Hyphenation: phi‧shing

phishing m (uncountable)

1. (computer security) phishing (criminal activity consisting of sending unsolicited emails whose purpose is to induce the user to provide personal and/or financial data)

• “phishing”, in Dicionário infopédia da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2025
• “phishing”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2025

Unadapted borrowing from English phishing.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfiʃin/ [ˈfi.ʃĩn]
• Rhymes: -iʃin
• Syllabification: phi‧shing

phishing m (uncountable)

1. (computing) phishing
   • 2013 April 17, “Revisa tu celular: estos son los países más afectados por el "malware"”, in CNN en Español‎^[3]:

     Los usuarios móviles también pueden ser engañados a través del llamado smishing; una combinación de las palabras SMS y phishing (donde un usuario recibe un mensaje de texto en el que se le pide información personal como un número de tarjeta de crédito o dirección de correo electrónico).

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.