fetching

1. 1
   adjective

   Attractive and pleasing to look at.

   She looked fetching in a green velvet dress and her grandmother's pearls.

   The cottage had a fetching little garden, crowded with roses and lavender.

   Similarattractive, appealing, charming, engaging, winsome

   Oppositeunattractive, plain, ugly

   Note

   Praise built from a verb: what is fetching draws the eye toward it, much as fetch means bringing something to you. It compares with more and most rather than -er and -est, and it usually describes looks, from the freckles in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) to the graceful sleeping Bill Bryson admits he lacks in In a Sunburned Country (2000).

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of fetch.

   She was up in the attic fetching an old photo album when the phone rang.

   Clocks like this one are fetching high prices at auction these days.

   Note

   After be it is the verb in progress (she was up in the attic fetching an album), and without be it can lead a clause as a gerund (fetching the mail is his job). It carries every meaning of fetch, the market one included, as when old clocks are fetching high prices. Before a noun, as in a fetching smile, the same spelling is almost always the adjective for attractive.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The act of going for something and bringing it back.

   The fetching of water from the well took up most of her morning.

   Most of the fetching and carrying at the reunion fell to the youngest cousins.

   Similarcollection, retrieval

   Note

   The noun is old: Middle English already had it, spelled fetchynge, fecchynge or faching. It is uncountable in the fetching of water, and it pairs naturally with carrying for the errands someone else gets stuck with. It can be counted too: evidence on drunkenness put before the House of Commons in 1834 tells of workmen sent out for fetchings of drink.

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