Dumbass Sayings: “Something Smells Fishy”

Sometimes when a pair of detectives are searching your house and they find nothing, one of them turns and says "Something still smells fishy... This isn't over." They mean to say something's suspicious, but why is a fishy smell suspicious? If something smells like fish it’s either one of two things, FISH or a woman’s private parts. That’s not a very big range of possibilities. If you’re going to describe a curious and suspicious situation with a smell it should be something a little more vague. If something smells like rotten eggs then that’s a much more curious smell because it could be any number of chemicals, many very harmful. A fish odor will generally not cause much damage to you. So to call something potentially harmful and suspicious “fishy” is a complete mislabeling. If something smells fishy that’s nothing a little soap and warm water can’t solve. If it persists then maybe you want to get your gynecologist on the horn. However, if something smells like sulfur then that’s probably pretty bad. If something smells like gas then that would be another thing that’s pretty suspicious. Could be a gas leak, could be someone farted. There’s a mystery there to solve. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what’s smelling like a fish.

Fish markets are the epitome of suspiciousness.