smelt

From Middle English smelt, from Old English smelt, from Proto-Germanic *smeltaz.

Any small anadromous fish of the family Osmeridae, found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and in lakes in North America and northern part of Europe.


hooligan

Borrowed from Chinook Jargon ulakan, from Clatsop Chinook, with spelling and pronunciation influenced by the preceding.

Haines and Klukwan hooligan harvesters reported that they exchanged hooligan products primarily for other food items, especially those unavailable in the Chilkat and Chilkoot area or those which were inaccessible to the harvester for various reasons. Respondents reported that virtually any wild food might be obtained for hooligan oil.

1994, Martha F. Betts, The Subsistence Hooligan Fishery of the Chilkat and Chilkoot Rivers, page 59:

Low-gradient, clear water streams on the western side of Portage Pass provide spawning and rearing habitat for red salmon, silver salmon, pink salmon, chum salmon, hooligan (smelt), and Dolly Varden (U.S. Bureau of Land Management 1977b).

1995, U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration & State of Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, Whittier Access Project, Seward Highway to Port of Whittier, Alaska: Draft Environmental Impact Statement, page 4-8:

Hooligan (smelt) are often spotted from the point as they come in with the tide.

2004, Kenai Peninsula Tour Guidebook, →ISBN, page 4:

Thaleichthys pacificus
Thaleichthys pacificus#Translingual

A type of fish, an anadromous smelt, Thaleichthys pacificus, found in the North Pacific.


minnow

The noun is derived from Late Middle English menew, menowe (“small fish; (specifically) common minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus); or stickleback (possibly the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus)”), from Old English *mynwe, an oblique form of *mynu, a variant of myne (“minnow; small fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *muniwu (“minnow; small fish”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“small”). Possibly influenced by Anglo-Norman menu (“small”) and Old French menu (“small”), and English minim (“anything very minute; applied to animalcula and the like”).
The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.
cognates
* Middle Low German mone, möne (Dutch meun, West Frisian meun)
* Old High German muniwa, munuwa, munewa (modern German Münne (“minnow”))
* Latin mēna (“small sea-fish”)

cog

Most minnows are small fish with cycloid scales, soft rays supporting their fins, and toothless jaws. Some possess barbels on their upper jaw, and many species develop nuptial tubercles during the breeding season. […] Minnows are arguably the most difficult group of freshwater fishes to identify, in part because they are often small and thus the characters distinguishing them are correspondingly small.

2004, Robert G. Werner, “Carps and Minnows: Family Cyprinidae”, in Freshwater Fishes of the Northeastern United States: A Field Guide, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 74:

Phoxinus phoxinus
Phoxinus phoxinus#Translingual

The common minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus), a small freshwater fish of the carp family Cyprinidae which has a green back with black elongated blotches, commonly swimming in large shoals.

Chiefly with a qualifying word: any of a number of other (small) fish from the family Cyprinidae; also (chiefly US), other small (usually freshwater) fish from other families.

karppi

any of a number of other (small) fish from the family Cyprinidae; other small (usually freshwater) fish from other families

galaxiid

(Australia, New Zealand) Synonym of galaxiid (“any member of the family Galaxiidae of mostly small freshwater fish of the Southern Hemisphere”); specifically, the common galaxias, inanga, or jollytail (Galaxias maculatus).

In quiet, sheltered places, where the water is clear but does not run too swiftly, the ‘minnie,’ as the stickleback is locally called, makes its nest by the bank. […] On these fibres the ova are deposited, and they are then either purposely partly covered with sand by the minnie, or else the particles that are brought down by the current gather over the bundle of fibres and conceal it, excepting one small spot.

1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter XIX, in Wild Life in a Southern County […], London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 356:

(British, regional) Synonym of stickleback (family Gasterosteidae).


grayling

From Middle English greylyng, equivalent to gray + -ling.

Other similar fish
Salmo salar (Atlantic salmon)


upokororo

A New Zealand fish, Prototroctes oxyrhynchus in the family Haplochitonidae, rather like a trout.


sweetfish

en-noun

sweetfish (plural sweetfishes or sweetfish)

Plecoglossus altivelis
Plecoglossus altivelis#Translingual

An amphidromous fish, the ayu of East Asia (Plecoglossus altivelis), the only member of its genus and family Plecoglossidae, named and prized for its sweet-tasting flesh, especially in Japan, as a game fish, and is also subject to extensive aquaculture.


eulachon

Borrowed from Chinook Jargon ulakan, from Clatsop Chinook.

The Tsimshian Indians of British Columbia observe certain ceremonies when the first olachen fish of the season are caught.

1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 8, page 254:


capelin

Borrowed from Middle French capelan, from Provençal and Old Occitan capelan, from Late Latin cappellānus (“chaplain”). Doublet of chaplain.

The birds are spread - so that we can see what they are like; and the men catching capelins are elevated up out of the umiak, where they practically float on the gunwale, so that we can perceive that they are the main figures and see their work-movements (fig. 250).

1983, Bodil Kaalund, translated by Kenneth Tindall, The Art of Greenland: Sculpture, Crafts, Painting, page 161:

Capelin are widely distributed in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Sea Okhotsk, and along the Kamchatka Peninsula.

1996, (US) National Academy of Sciences, The Bering Sea Ecosystem, page 107:

Capelin is a relatively small, pelagic species found in the North-East Atlantic, the Barents Sea, Southwest of Greenland, off the coast of Labrador, and around Newfoundland.

2009, Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, Who Gets What?, page 20:

Mallotus villosus, a type of smelt found in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.


icefish

en-verb

icefish (third-person singular simple present icefishes, present participle icefishing, simple past and past participle icefished)

icefishes (present singular third-person)
icefishing (participle present)
icefished (participle past)
icefished (past)


cowfish

Common bottlenose dolphin
Ostraciidae
Risso's dolphin
Scrawled cowfish

A marine plectognath fish, Acanthostracion quadricornis and allied species, having two projections, like horns, in front.


noodlefish

en-noun

noodlefish (plural noodlefishes or noodlefish)

noodlefishes (plural)
noodlefish (plural)

Any of the family Salangidae of osmeriform fish, related to the smelts, with translucent bodies and no scales.


galaxiid

(zoology) Any member of the family Galaxiidae of mostly small freshwater fish of the Southern Hemisphere.


lodde

1813, Leopold von Buch (Freiherr), Travels through Norway and Lapland
We were actually told that when the lodde enters from the sea, the fishermen smell them at a distance of ten English miles, and immediately set off in their boats in quest of them.


candlefish

candlefish (plural candlefishes or candlefish)

candlefishes (plural)
candlefish (plural)

An oily edible fish, Thaleichthys pacificus, from the northern Pacific, that was once dried and used as a candle or torch by the Chinook Indians.


shishamo

Borrowed from Japanese 柳葉魚 (shishamo, literally “willow leaf fish”), ultimately from Ainu スサㇺ (susam).

bor

Spirinchus lanceolatus, a Japanese smelt.


European smelt

Any smelt of species Osmerus eperlanus, common in fresh waters of northern Europe.


frostfish

en-noun

frostfish (plural frostfishes or frostfish)

From frost + fish. In the case of the tomcod, so called because it is abundant on the New England coast in autumn at about when frost comes.


ayu

A sweetfish, an amphidromous fish of East Asia, the only member of its genus and family, Plecoglossus altivelis, named and prized for its sweet-tasting flesh. It is a game fish and is also subject to extensive aquaculture.


sperling

(UK, archaic, dialect) A smelt; a sparling.


aplochitonid

(zoology) Any fish in the family Aplochitonidae, now considered part of the family Galaxiidae.


osmerid

Getting back to feeding, we found it convenient at Point Mugu to use two forms of fish: the smaller osmerids for training purposes (they are cleaner than cut fish), and mackerel.

1966, Kenneth Stafford Norris, Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises, page 663:

She proved the independence of the evolutionary development of osmerids and plecoglossids which form an independent suborder and clearly outlined main traits of similarity and difference of the Salmonoidei and the osmerids.

1997, Journal of Ichthyology, volume 37, page 207:

Osmerids are generally small, silvery, elongate fishes that swim in the water column.

2009, Gene Helfman, Bruce B. Collette, Douglas E. Facey, Brian W. Bowen, The Diversity of Fishes: Biology, Evolution, and Ecology, page 279:

(zoology) Any fish of the family Osmeridae, a smelt.


plecoglossid

1984, Excerpta Medica, Section 3: Endocrinology, Volume 51, page 251,
Furthermore, the antibody to sPRL reacted only with PRL cells in the pituitaries of three species of salmonids, a plecoglossid, eel, carp, goldfish, killifish, tilapia, and five species of marine fishes, […] .

1986, Southwest Fisheries Center (U.S.), Collected Reprints, Issue 1, page 370,
Iwai & Rosenthal (1981), and Watanabe (1984b) have observed ciliated cells and cilia movement that aid in the transport of food in the alimentary canals of some plecoglossid, osmerid, clupeid, and salangid larvae.

Families included here include prototroctids, most diadromous galaxiids, a plecoglossid, mugiloidid, and some eleotrids and gobiids.

1988, Robert Montgomery McDowall, Diadromy in Fishes, page 33:

(zoology) Any fish of the family Plecoglossidae (sometimes regarded as a subfamily, Plecoglossinae in Osmeridae); the ayu or sweetfish.


retropinnid

(zoology) Any member of the family Retropinnidae; smelts of Australia and New Zealand.


salangid

(zoology) Any member of the family Salangidae of icefishes and noodlefishes.


sparling

From Middle English sperlynge, shortened from Old French esperlinge, a Germanic borrowing, found in German Spiering, Spierling, Middle Low German spirling, Middle Dutch spierling, suffixed from the word now Dutch spier (“spar, pole; muscle”). See also sparrow for a homonymic bird-name.


black mudfish

Neochanna diversus, a galaxiid fish found in swamps and wetlands of the North Island of New Zealand.


wakasagi

Means of Introduction: Wakasagi were intentionally introduced in 1959 from Japan by the California Department of Fish and Game as an experimental forage fish for trout

2011 September 16, “wakasagi (Hypomesus nipponensis)”, in NAS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species, USGS:

Wakasagi are pelagic plankton feeders found in open lakes, streams and reservoirs. They can survive in a wide range of temperatures (2-29°C) and salinities (0-29 ppt).

2021, “California fish species”, in University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources:

Japanese smelt, Hypomesus nipponensis, a fish native to Japan and introduced in the United States


Japanese smelt

A freshwater fish of species Hypomesus nipponensis, native to Korea, Japan, and Sakhalin.