What does “catfishing” mean in American English?
Awkward Reunion With A Real-Life Catfish Soulmate
B1 English listening practice · American English · Picked for people who know some
Catfishing is American English internet slang for tricking someone online by pretending to be a fake romantic partner. The verb comes from Nev Schulman’s 2010 documentary Catfish, which followed a New York man falling for a woman who turned out to be someone else entirely. The MTV reality show Catfish: The TV Show started in 2012 and made the verb mainstream. The 2013 Manti Te’o scandal, where a famous American football player was tricked by an online “girlfriend” who didn’t exist, cemented catfishing in American slang. The verb is now in Merriam-Webster.
In this clip, a woman meets her catfish “soulmate” Frank in person for the first time. He’s real after all, just much less imagined.
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Harder words in this video
These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-US 2012 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In American MTV reality TV (Catfish: The TV Show)
- ▸In American dating-app news and warnings (Tinder, Hinge, Bumble)
- ▸In American teen and college dating-safety content
- ▸In American crime podcasts about online scams (Sword and Scale, Crime Junkie)
- ▸In American sitcoms about online relationships (The Mindy Project, Black Mirror)