salmon

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C1 — Advanced

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun any of various large food and game fishes of northern waters; usually migrate from salt to fresh water to spawn
  2. noun a tributary of the Snake River in Idaho
  3. noun flesh of any of various marine or freshwater fish of the family Salmonidae

Etymology

From Middle English samoun, samon, saumon, from Anglo-Norman saumon, from Old French saumon, from Latin salmō, salmōn-. Widely displaced native Middle English lax, from Old English leax (whence modern dialectal lax). The unpronounced l was later inserted to make the word appear closer to its Latin root (compare words like debt, indict, receipt for the same spelling Latinizations). The verb sense “ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street” alludes to salmon swimming upstream against the flow of a river to spawn.

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