trout
/tɹaʊt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.78 in modern English
5
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of several species of fish in Salmonidae, closely related to salmon, and distinguished by spawning more than once.
Countable; Uncountable
verb
To (figuratively) slap someone with a slimy, stinky, wet trout; to admonish jocularly.
Transitive verb
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "Many anglers consider trout to be the archetypical quarry."
- "Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet:[…]."
- "“This morning,” he said, “We will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout so that we may catch grayling.”"
- "Roman matrons, sexually exhausted, were fond of trout caught in a little stream in the Vosges Mountains."
- "It is not a crime to enjoy some bacon or a trout or what have you."
- "Look, you silly old trout, you can't keep bringing home cats! You can't afford the ones you have!"
Etymology
From Middle English troute, troughte, trught, trouȝt, trouhte, partly from Old English truht (“trout”), and partly from Old French truite; both from Late Latin tructa, perhaps from Ancient Greek τρώκτης (trṓktēs, “nibbler”), from τρώγω (trṓgō, “to gnaw”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, to turn”). The Internet verb sense originated on BBSes of the 1980s, probably from Monty Python's The Fish-Slapping Dance (1972), though that sketch involved a halibut.