fish out of water

Meaning

Noun

• A person in unfamiliar and often uncomfortable surroundings.

Origin

• Earliest recorded use: "Fishes out of the Water" (1613, Samuel Purchas, Pilgrimage).
• Earliest use of metaphor by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales: Prologue (1483) as "fissh that is waterlees".
• Compare also the antonymous French comme un poisson dans l'eau, German wie ein Fisch im Wasser.