mackerel
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Scomber scombrus
English
Pronunciation
Etymology 1
From Middle English mackerell, macrell, macrelle, makarell, makerel, makerell, makerelle, makrel, makrell, makyrelle, from Old French maquerel. Further origin unknown.
Noun
mackerel (countable and uncountable, plural mackerel or mackerels)
- Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,
- typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.
- c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
- […] you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.
- 1704, [Jonathan Swift], A Tale of a Tub. , London: John Nutt, , →OCLC, page 215:
- I am living fast, to see the Time, when a Book that misses its Tide, shall be neglected, as the Moon by Day, or like Mackarel a Week after the Season.
- 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
- Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.
- 1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 6, in Lud-in-the-Mist, London: Millennium, published 2000, page 68:
- He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel’s back.
- 1982, Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Chapter 5, in Zami; Sister Outsider; Undersong, New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993, p. 47,
- “ if you ever so much as breathe a word about my stories, Sandman’s comin’ after you the very same minute to pluck out you eyes like a mackerel for soup.”
- typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.
- A true mackerel, any fish of tribe Scombrini (Scomber spp., Rastrelliger spp.)
- Certain other similar small fish in families Carangidae, Gempylidae, and Hexagrammidae.
Derived terms
- Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus spp.)
- Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus)
- butterfly mackerel (Gasterochisma melampus)
- cero mackerel (Scomberomorus regalis)
- chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus)
- cold as a mackerel
- common mackerel (Scomber scombrus)
- dead as a mackerel
- double-lined mackerel (Grammatorcynus bilineatus)
- holy mackerel
- horse mackerel
- jack mackerel (Trachurus spp.)
- king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla)
- mackerel bird (Jynx torquilla)
- mackerel breeze
- mackerel cock (Puffinus puffinus)
- mackereler
- mackerel gale
- mackerel gull (Sterninae spp.)
- mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari)
- mackerelled
- mackerelling
- mackerelly
- mackerel midge (Gadidae spp.)
- mackerel pike (Scomberesocidae spp.)
- mackerel-pike (Scomberesocidae spp.)
- mackerel scad (Decapterus macarellus)
- mackerel shad (Decapterus spp.)
- mackerel shark (Lamniformes spp.)
- mackerel sky
- mackerel sky and mare's-tails make lofty ships carry low sails, mackerel sky and mare's-tails make tall ships carry low sails
- mackerel snapper
- mackerel tuna (Euthynnus alletteratus)
- snake mackerel (Gempylus serpens, Gempylidae spp.)
- Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorini spp.)
- stink like a mackerel
- throw a sprat to catch a mackerel
- tinker mackerel (Scomber colias)
- yellow mackerel (Caranx crysos)
Translations
edible fish
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See also
References
mackerel on Wikipedia.Wikipedia 
Scombridae on Wikispecies.Wikispecies 
Category:Scombridae on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
Etymology 2
From Middle English makerel, maquerel, from Old French maquerel, from Middle Dutch makelare, makelaer (“broker”) (> makelaar (“broker, peddler”)). See also French maquereau.
Noun
mackerel (plural mackerels)
- (obsolete) A pimp; also, a bawd.
- 1483, William Caxton, Magnus Cato, quoted in James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, publ. by John Russell Smith (1847), page 536.
- nyghe his hows dwellyd a maquerel or bawde
- 1980, The Police Journal, Volume 53 (page 257) doi:10.1177/0032258X8005300305 (also available at Google books)
- NETTING MACKEREL: THE PIMP DETAIL
- 1981, Peter Gammond, Raymond Horricks, Big Bands, page 15:
- Hundreds of ‘night birds’ and their ‘mackerels’ and other vice-pushers were sent packing.
- 2006, Paul Crowley, Message-ID: <[email protected]> in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
- A procurer or a pimp is a broker (or broker-between), a mackerel, or a pandar; the last is not necessarily-and, indeed, not usually-a professional.
- 2009, Jeffery Klaehn, Roadblocks to Equality, →ISBN, page 118:
- You can't 'work' in a legal brothel without mackerel.
- 2012, J. Robert Janes, Mayhem, →ISBN:
- Perhaps, but my sources think the mackerel knew of this girl but she didn't know of him.
- 1483, William Caxton, Magnus Cato, quoted in James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, publ. by John Russell Smith (1847), page 536.