sprat

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sprat

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From Middle English sprotte, from Old English sprot. Older source is unknown. Cognate with German Sprotte, Dutch sprot. Compare sprout.

• IPA^(key): /spɹæt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æt

sprat (plural sprat or sprats)

1. Any of various small, herring-like, marine fish in the genus Sprattus, in the family Clupeidae.
2. Any of various similar fish of other genera.
3. (by extension) Anything petty or insignificant.
4. (UK, slang, obsolete) A sixpence.
   • 1859, Snowden's magistrates assistant, page 90:

     The price of a case (five shillings piece bad) from the smasher is about one shilling; an alderman (two and sixpence) about sixpence; a peg (shilling) about threepence; a downer or sprat (sixpence) about twopence.

• a sprat to catch a mackerel, throw a sprat to catch a mackerel
• European sprat (Sprattus sprattus)
• slender sprat (Spratelloides gracilis)
• spratlike

• spratting

• pilchard
• sardine

• (sixpence): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary

sprat (third-person singular simple present sprats, present participle spratting, simple past and past participle spratted)

1. (transitive, historical) To manure (land) with sprats (the fish).
   • 1923, The Agricultural Gazette and Modern Farming, volume 98, page 190:

     […] spratting the land. This treatment is supplemented by about half a ton of artificial manure, largely made up of a mixture of superphosphate and some nitrogenous manure.

• S trap, TRAPS, parts, prats, rapts, strap, tarps, traps

• Audio:

  (file)

sprat m (plural sprats)

1. sprat

• “sprat”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

• IPA^(key): /sprât/

sprȁt m (Cyrillic spelling спра̏т)

1. floor, story/storey (level)

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:спрат.