mackerel

English

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈmæk(ə)ɹəl/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Hyphenation: mack‧e‧rel,
  • mack‧erel
  • Rhymes: -ækɹəl

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)

  1. Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,
    1. typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.
  2. A true mackerel, any fish of tribe Scombrini (Scomber spp., Rastrelliger spp.)
  3. Certain other similar small fish in families Carangidae, Gempylidae, and Hexagrammidae.
  4. (chiefly attributive, of clouds, the sky, etc) A regular pattern, similar to fish scales, of undulating small clouds with sky visible between them.
    a mackerel sky
    • 1892, George Scott, Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes: Containing a Complete List of All the Lights and Light-houses, Fog Signals and Buoys on Both the American and Canadian Shores, page 277:
      MACKEREL CLOUDS.- Mackerel scales and mares' tails / Make lofty ships carry low sails.
    • 1908, The Journal of Geography, page 201:
      Mackerel clouds in sky, Expect more wet than dry. A mackerel sky, Not twenty-four hours dry.
    • 2018 May 27, Nick Wigram, Get Off of My Cloud, Nick Wigram:
      Mackerel in the sky, three days dry. […] Mackerel sky, mackerel sky - never long wet, never long dry.
Derived terms
Descendants
  • Sylheti: ꠝꠦꠇꠞꠥꠟ (mexrul)
Translations
See also

References

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)

  1. (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: <ciGug.11527$j7.319767@news.indigo.ie> in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare [3]
      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[4], →ISBN, page 118:
      You can't 'work' in a legal brothel without mackerel.
    • 2012, J. Robert Janes, Mayhem‎[5], →ISBN:
      Perhaps, but my sources think the mackerel knew of this girl but she didn't know of him.
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