dogfish
noun, verb
Forms dogfishes dogfishing dogfished dog-fish
- noun Any of various small sharks
- noun Especially those from the family Squalidae
- noun A catshark, any shark from family Scyliorhinidae
- noun A kitefin shark, any shark from family Dalatiidae
- noun (UK) Scyliorhinus canicula or Scyliorhinus stellaris
- noun (Azores Is.) Scyliorhinus canicula
- noun (Canada) Squalus suckleyi
- noun (Bermuda) Mustelus canis
- verb To engage in dogfishing.
Synonyms
Etymology
From dog + fish. Compare Greek σκυλόψαρο (skylópsaro, “dogfish”), Latin canicula (“dogfish”, literally “little dog”), Italian pescecane (“dogfish”), French chien de mer (literally “dog of the sea”), German Meerhund (literally “seadog”) and Hundfisch (“dogfish”), and English seadog. For non-Indo-European cognates, see Maltese kelb il-baħar (literally “dog of the sea”) and Turkish köpek balığı (“shark”), likely calques from Indo-European languages.
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “dogfish”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details