The quillfish was first formally described in 1881 by the American ichthyologist Tarleton Hoffman Bean with its type locality given as the entrance to Port Levasheff in Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

[1] In 1883 David Starr Jordan and Charles Henry Gilbert classified Bean's genus in a monogeneric family, the Ptilichthyidae.

[2] The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies this family within the suborder Zoarcoidei, within the order Scorpaeniformes.

The specific name honours the American ichthyologist George Brown Goode, who was a colleague and collaborator of Bean's.

[6] The Quillfish has an extremely elongate, slender body with lon-based tall dorsal and anal fins which make the fish similar in shape to the primary feather of a bird or a quill pen.

The small head is only between 4 and 7% of the length of the body and there is a wide fleshy appendage at the front of the lower jaw.