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Idiom: Different kettle of fish
I have a strange idiom for you today.
Many phrases and expressions in English need to be clarified and are almost impossible to understand if you try to figure them out based on the words alone.
Well, a different kettle of fish could drive you crazy.
I vividly remember trying to figure this out when I was just a young boy fishing for cod with my father.
Before we get into the story, let me give you the definition.
When someone says something is a different kettle of fish, they mean someone or something is entirely different than something else.
For example, dating Australian women is a different kettle of fish than dating Japanese ladies.
So, anyways, I often heard the fishermen say something was a different kettle of fish and wondered why you would put fish in a kettle.
At that time, I knew the word quintal (100kg), a unit of measurement the old fishermen used for fish.
So, there I was, a little boy about eight or nine years old, thinking that over time a different quintal of fish had become a different kettle of fish.
Words and pronunciations change over time, don’t they?
Yes, I was wise beyond my years.
Recently, I learned the idiom – a different kettle of fish – might come from kiddle-net fishing.
In this type of fishing, a net is stretched out from the shore to the low tide mark.
During high tide, fish are caught in the net, and it’s easy to pick the fish from the net when the tide goes out.
The bottom line is no matter what the origin is, the idiom a different kettle of fish means one thing is totally different from another.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 68.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.