kettle of fish

1. 1.

   informal terms for a difficult situation

   “he got into a terrible fix”

   “he made a muddle of his marriage”

   Synonymsfixholejammessmuddlepickle

   Broaderdifficulty

   Narrowerdog's breakfast

Questions about kettle of fish

What does kettle of fish mean?

kettle of fish means "informal terms for a difficult situation".

What is another word for kettle of fish?

Close synonyms include fix, hole, jam, mess, muddle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is kettle of fish a common word?

kettle of fish is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.