Daily AncestorFisherman
A fisherman earned his living by catching fish, from the shore, a small boat or a fishing vessel at sea.
In 1900 enumerators were told to describe a fisherman or oysterman as exactly as possible, and not to return a man who fished from a vessel as a sailor: if he earned his living by fishing, he was a fisherman.
The fisherman caught the fish; the fishmonger sold it to the public. Fisher is the older word for the same trade, revived today as a gender-neutral term.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1940 census
Asa Snow, 38, Fisherman
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Daily Ancestor. "Fisherman." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/fisherman. Last checked 2026-10-10.