What does "brokefishing" mean?

The practice of playing financially disadvantaged with the goal of having another party in an interpersonal relationship spend more money or provide a financial safety net or in order to attract immaterial benefits such as sympathy.

Brokefishing

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
The practice of playing financially disadvantaged with the goal of having another party in an interpersonal relationship spend more money or provide a financial safety net or in order to attract immaterial benefits such as sympathy. neologism, slang, uncountable

Etymology

Blend of broke + catfishing. Coined by Refinery 29 journalist Pema Bakshi in 2022. The economic environment is provided by the Wikipedia articles 2021–2023 inflation surge and cost-of-living crisis.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.