fetch
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
v.to be sold for a particular amount of money.
v.to achieve or command a specific price at sale or auction.
Simple“The old painting is expected to fetch over five thousand dollars at the auction.”
In context“Despite its poor condition, the rare first-edition manuscript fetched a record-breaking sum when it finally went under the hammer.”
- 02 C1 Advanced
v.to get information from a computer's memory.
v.to retrieve an instruction or a unit of data from memory for processing.
Simple“The processor needs to fetch the next instruction before it can finish the task.”
In context“The system's performance was bottlenecked by the time required to fetch large datasets from the remote server.”
- 03 B1 Intermediate
n.a game where you throw a ball or stick and a dog brings it back.
n.a game of retrieval played with a pet, typically a dog.
Simple“We spent the afternoon playing fetch with the dog in the park.”
In context“The golden retriever never seemed to tire of fetch, returning the tennis ball to his owner's feet with relentless enthusiasm.”
- 04 C2 Proficiency
n.the distance that wind blows over open water without hitting anything.
n.the length of water over which a given wind has blown, determining the size of the waves produced.
Simple“The long fetch across the lake allowed the wind to create very large waves.”
In context“Because the bay has a limited fetch, the water remains relatively calm even during significant gale-force winds.”
- 05 C2 Proficiency
n.the ghost of a living person, often seen as a bad sign.
n.the apparition or double of a living person, traditionally interpreted as an omen of their approaching death.
Simple“In the old story, the man saw his own fetch walking toward him on the road.”
In context“The protagonist was haunted by the sight of his fetch, a silent double that appeared in the mist as a harbinger of his demise.”
fetch vs bring — Bring is a one-way movement toward the speaker, while fetch is a two-way trip to go get something and return with it.
The verb is derived from Middle English fecchen (“to get and bring back, fetch; to come for, get and take away; to steal; to carry away to kill; to search for; to obtain, procure”) [and other forms], from Old English feċċan, fæċċan, feccean (“to fetch, bring; to draw; to gain, take; to seek”), a variant of fetian, fatian (“to bring near, fetch; to acquire, obtain; to bring on, induce; to fetch a wife, marry”) and possibly related to Old English facian, fācian (“to acquire, obtain; to try to obtain; to get; to get to, reach”), both from Proto-Germanic fatōną, fatjaną (“to hold, seize; to fetch”), from Proto-Indo-European *ped- (“to step, walk; to fall, stumble”). The English word is cognate with Dutch vatten (“to apprehend, catch; to grasp; to understand”), German fassen (“to catch, grasp; to capture, seize”), English fet (“(obsolete) to fetch”), Faroese fata (“to grasp, understand”), Danish fatte (“to grasp, understand”), Swedish fatta (“to grasp, understand”), Icelandic feta (“to go, step”), West Frisian fetsje (“to grasp”). The noun is derived from the verb.
Uncertain; the following possibilities have been suggested: * From fetch-life (“(obsolete, rare) a deity, spirit, etc., who guides the soul of a dead person to the afterlife; a psychopomp”). From the supposed Old English fæcce (“evil spirit formerly thought to sit on the chest of a sleeping person; a mare”). * From Old Irish fáith (“seer, soothsayer”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.