milt
/mɪlt/ noun, verb
Forms milts milting milted
- noun (countable) The spleen, especially of an animal bred for food.
- noun The semen of a male fish.
- noun The engorged testis containing a filled reservoir of mature spermatozoa in a male fish.
- verb (transitive) To impregnate (the roe of a fish) with milt.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English milte, from Old English milte, milt (“milt, spleen”), from Proto-West Germanic *miltijā, *meltā, from Proto-Germanic *meltǭ (“spleen”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)meld- (“to beat, grind, crush, weaken”). Cognate with German Milz, Dutch milt, Danish milt, Norwegian milt, Swedish mjälte. Outside Germanic, with Albanian mëlçi (“liver”) and Italian milza (“spleen”), which is a borrowing from Lombardic.
Webster’s 1913
- noun The spleen.
- verb To impregnate (the roe of a fish) with milt.
Etymology [AS. milte; akin to D. milt, G. milz, OHG. milzi, Icel. milti, Dan. milt, Sw. mjälte, and prob. to E. malt, melt. sq. root108. See Malt the grain.]
Etymology [Akin to Dan. melk, Sw. mjölke, G. milch, and E. milk. See Milk.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “milt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details