BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 07:23 PM

McGrath

Depends on what the emphasised object English people are thinking about when they start a phrase - if you are thinking about the 'fish' then it is a more natural way to think - if you are talking about 'the barrel' then 'barrel full of fish' is the more appropriate phrase. So depends on whether you are primarily interested in shooting barrels or fish.....

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 01:18 PM

That's an idea - a barrel full of fish, but not full of water. Though I can't see people saying "fish in a barrel", not in English - they'd be likely to say something like "a barrelfull of fish", the same way they say " a barrelfull of monkeys".

Unless the original phrase might not have been English at all, but imported along with the fish from some country where that way of putting it might be more natural. Norway? The Netherlands? Germnay? Or some community in the USA where that speech pattern might have been carried over at he start of the last century.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: GUEST,Beetle
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 10:49 AM

My helicopter outfit in Viet Nam had a door-gunner's joke -- like shooting fish in a barrel EXCEPT that the fish get to shoot back!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: gnomad
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 06:50 AM

I've never thought about this one before, but I wonder whether PoppaGator could be on to something.

The line says fish in a barrel, not in a barrel full of water. This makes me think in terms of barrels of herring, pilchards, or similar. Fish used to be shipped in this fashion, packed in so tight that if you had the means to shoot the barrel at all, you could hardly fail to hit a fish.

I have no grounds to support the theory, it's just an idea.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Boab
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 03:06 AM

Dunno what that Boab guy's on about; maybe he's been on the piss or something. I think he was trying to say --akin to the Scots "couldnae hit doors at Hall'een" . Or couldnae hit the right key on the keyboard even when he's sober----

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Boab
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 03:00 AM

Akin to the Scots "

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Billy the Bus
Date: 27 Nov 04 - 02:09 AM

G'day McGrath,

Mi braincell is working overtime, trying to recall the 'Shooting Ballery' in the cicus sideshow, when I was a kid. You got a pea-rifle to shoot at fixed targets, or rows of moving tagets that flipped over when you hit them. One I recall also had a tub of turbulent water, with numbered ducks bobbing about on the surface. That was thetricki one.

Maybe the expression refers to an early variant, with a barrel?

Cheers - Sa,

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 10:56 PM

It never occurred to me that anyone would ever have the slightest difficulty shoting fish in a barrel. Now we're dealing with questions about physics!

I think it only seems problematic if you're picturing *one* fish in a barrel. If you understand the word "fish" as plural, you can see that the barrel is chock full of fish, piled on top of each other -- sitting ducks,in other words, to mix a metaphor.

See -- it's all the fault of that dang English language, failing to diffrentiate between singluar and plural for one particular word, the noun "fish."-- like "deer."

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 10:36 PM

I haven't worked out the math or anything, but if you did have a gun muzzle perpendicular to and close to the surface of liquid in a barrel -- water, I assume, in this case -- the blast from the firing could cause any fish in the barrel to float to the surface, concussed and unconcious. But you'd need a pretty powerful gun, perhaps a 12 or 10 gauge shotgun, and it would be a good idea NOT to stick the muzzle into the water.

I also haven't tried this, and don't really want to.

Shooting fish in the wild used to be legal in, I believe, Vermont.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Mooh
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 09:15 PM

In a barrel there is virtually no light refraction because one is supposedly looking straight down. A shot gun would nail nearly anything in a barrel, and exactly what's it made of that it would reflect shot? Water also slows the shot a bit, especially on rebound, doesn't it?

Just supposing.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 08:31 PM

if this site doesn't have any info, it is hard to know who would... Oh, there are LOTS of explanations about what it means, but virtually no information about possible origins except this note from the listserv of the American Dialect Society which finds an entry in a newspaper from 1911.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 08:16 PM

But someone must have said it in some part of the world.

And unlike the other examples you gave, mack, this one doesn't seem to make much sense.

One parallel is Simple Simon -

Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch a whale:
All the water he had got
Was in his mother's pail!

However the implication of this is that the fishing expedition was not a great success.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 08:08 PM

I think it's akin to "can't hit the broad side of a barn". ie. It's not something any one is really going to try, it just sounds good. A bit like "a boar hog in a peach orchard"; it won't happen if you've got any sense.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 07:20 PM

well, I figured that finding learned dissertations on the would be like stealing candy from a baby, but I guess not...

most of the site which usually know the answer have missed it....maybe it's too common to trace.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 07:06 PM

Even with a bow and arrow it'd require a great deal of skill, because of the refraction of light. But the implication when the expression is used is that it would be simple. I suppose if it were a very big fish and a small barrel it would be easier.

It sounds as if it must come from some kind of story. I'm still hoping that someone will be able to come up with some reference.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 06:52 PM

Ah...but how would you get them into the barrel in the first place?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Thomas the Rhymer
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 06:48 PM

If you were using a bow and arrow... it would be alot easier than sneaking up on the slimy buggers out in the wild... and you could retrieve your arrows with scarsely an effort!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: PoppaGator
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 05:10 PM

If the fish is in the barrel of your gun (as opposed to residing in a cask of some sort), I'm sure it would be hard to miss.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: artbrooks
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 05:00 PM

Use a shotgun in a very shallow barrel...or even better a 1/4 pound stick of dynamite. No problem.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 04:46 PM

Maybe it's a corruption of 'shooting pish into a barrel'? Lower pants, take aim... and.....fire!

Subject: RE: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: mousethief
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 04:43 PM

I think that it's a corruption of "Shooting Phish in a barrel" which is a much simpler thing. If you got all the band members of Phish into a small barrel, shooting them would be easy.

I'll get me coat.

Subject: BS: 'Shooting fish in a barrel'??
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Nov 04 - 04:37 PM

This expression came up in another thread, as it does from tine to time, and it suddenly occurred to me to wonder where the hell the phrase comes from.

More to the point, how has it come to be used to mean doing something which is very easy, or picking on targets impossible to miss? For in reality "shooting at fish in a barrel" would surely be remarkably hard to do, and you'd very likely end up killing yourself or someone else.

With a wooden bucket you'd shoot straight through, with a metal bucket the bullet would likely bounce out agauin - and even if you used a pea-shooter, hitting a fish would be extraordinarily difficult, given the way water refracts light.

Normally, when curiosity gets awoken by a phrase in this manner, it's an easy matter to solve the riddle through Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase or Fable, or via Google. But this time, no luck. Plenty of people using the phrase, but no indication could I find as to where it comes from, and how it can possibly make any kind of sense.

So can anybody out there throw any light on it?