grilse

English

Etymology

From Middle English grills, grilles, of unknown origin. Cognate with Scots grils, grissill, girls (“young salmon”). Compare English grawl, Scots grawl, graulse (“young salmon, grilse”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹɪls/
• Rhymes: -ɪls

Noun

grilse (plural grilses)

1. A young salmon after its first return from the sea.

   Synonym: grilt

   • 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter [VI], in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 133:

     [T]hey ca' it fasting when they hae the best o' fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, gilses, salmon, and a' the lave o't, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]

     They call it fasting when they have the best of fish from Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forby [i.e., besides] trouts, grilses, salmon, and all the rest of it, and so they make their fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]

   • 1961, Albert Upton, Design for Thinking: A First Book in Semantics, Stanford University Press, page 4:

     In our own tongue salmon are fry as babies, parr as children, smolt as adolescents, and grilse as adults.

Alternative forms

• gilse

Translations

young salmon

• Finnish: lohi (fi)
• Greek: σολομάκι n (solomáki), σολομός ηλικίας 4 ετών m (solomós ilikías 4 etón)
• Irish: bláthán m
• Manx: braddan noa m
• Mi'kmaq: taqawan anim
• Persian: آزادماهی (fa) (âzâdmâhi)
• Welsh: gleisiad (cy) m

Anagrams

• Sigler, Sliger, e-girls, egirls, elrigs, girles, ligers