shad
/ʃæd/ noun, proper noun
Forms shads
- noun Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
- noun (South Africa) Any bluefish of the species Pomatomus saltatrix.
- proper noun A surname.
Etymology
From Middle English shadde, from Old English sċeadd, of uncertain origin. Compare Low German Schade (“shad, herring”), Scottish Gaelic sgadan (“herring”), Welsh ysgadan. Possibly from Scandinavian/North Germanic (compare dialectal Norwegian skadd (“small whitefish”), Old Norse skata (“kind of fish”)), but the order of borrowing is unclear and the ultimate origin of these words is obscure.
* As an Urdu and Persian surname, from شاد (šâd, “glad, cheerful”). This surname is mostly found in Pakistan.
* As an English surname, from the noun shad.
* As a German surname, Americanized from Schade, itself related to Schaden (“damage”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any one of several species of food fishes of the Herring family. The American species (Clupea sapidissima), which is abundant on the Atlantic coast and ascends the larger rivers in spring to spawn, is an important market fish. The European allice shad, or alose (C. alosa), and the twaite shad. (C. finta), are less important species. [Written also chad.]
Etymology [AS. sceadda a kind of fish, akin to Prov. G. schade; cf. Ir. & Gael. sgadan a herring, W. ysgadan herrings; all perhaps akin to E. skate a fish.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “shad”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details