Fish

Something available in quantity, if you can hold it. Fish carry Water and, by sound-association in Chinese, surplus — the word for fish sounds like the word for abundance, which is why a fish appears on New Year tables rather than being eaten only for hunger.

In the traditional vocabulary it is not read as a warning. Something available in quantity, if you can hold it. The animal is treated as a description of a situation — usually involving timing or a person — not as a prediction. Whether the fish is in water or on land changes the reading more than the species does — a distinction most dream dictionaries flatten.

Traditional readings treat fish as a comment on resources. Swimming freely suggests availability; a fish out of water suggests an opportunity that has arrived in the wrong form to be used. It is grouped under Water (水) in the five-element system.