Other forms: fetched, fetching, fetches
To fetch something is to go where it is, pick it up, and bring it back. You fetch a chair from the kitchen, fetch the kids from school, throw a stick and the dog fetches it.
Both halves matter: the going and the coming back. If you only go and get a thing, that is "get"; fetch carries the return trip inside it. Dog owners use it as a game and as a command — throw the ball, shout "Fetch!" Things fetch prices too: the old dresser fetched four hundred pounds at auction. Programmers fetch data from a server, and the browser's own command is called fetch. The word sounds British; Americans reach for "go get".
1verbfetchTo go to where something is and bring it back.
“Could you fetch my glasses from the kitchen?”
2verbsoldTo be sold for a particular price.
“The painting fetched twice what anyone expected.”
3verbcomputingIn computing, to get data from memory, a disk, or a server.
“The page fetches the latest prices every thirty seconds.”
4noungameA game in which a dog chases a thrown object and brings it back.
“The retriever would play fetch until your arm gave out.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Fetch runs back through Middle English fecchen ("to get and bring back") to Old English feċċan, a variant of fetian, "to bring near, fetch". Further back stand Proto-Germanic *fatōną and a Proto-Indo-European root *ped-, "to step, walk". The walking is the point: fetching has always been a journey there and back.
Proto-Indo-European
*ped- — to step, walk; to fall, stumble
Proto-Germanic
*fatōną
Old English
feċċan
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
English, today
fetch
Built from
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”) facch, facche, facchen, fach, fache, fæchen, fatche, feccean, fecche, fecchen, fecchenn, fecchyn, fech, fechchen, feche, fechen, fechin, fechyn, fetche, fetchen, fetchyn, focche, focchen, fochche, foche, fotche, vacche, vacchen, vecche, vecchen, vechchen, 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA