/tɹaʊt/, /tɹʌʊt/
OriginFrom Middle English troute, troughte, trught, trouȝt, trouhte, partly from Old English truht (“trout”), and partly from Old French truite; both from Late Latin tructa, perhaps from Ancient Greek τρώκτης (trṓktēs, “nibbler”), from τρώγω (trṓgō, “I gnaw”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, to turn”). The Internet verb sense originated on BBSes of the 1980s, probably from Monty Python's The Fish-Slapping Dance (1972), though that sketch involved a halibut.
- countable, uncountableAny of several species of fish in Salmonidae, closely related to salmon, and distinguished by spawning more than once.
“Many anglers consider trout to be the archetypical quarry.”
“Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet:[…].”
““This morning,” he said, “We will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout so that we may catch grayling.””
- intransitiveTo fish for trout.
“God bless me! is it possible that you, a tall fellow with a black moustache, can be the curly fair-haired boy I have so often carried on my back and saddle-bow, and taught to make flies of red spinner”
“We found not more than three birds in any one place, and many times only one old bird, and this where we knew they had bred, for our pointer Rex found them while we were trouting.”
“He didn’t want to go out on the water. I wouldn’t say he was afraid of it, because every time he was home he was always out in the boat trouting.”
- transitiveTo (figuratively) slap someone with a slimy, stinky, wet trout; to admonish jocularly.
Formstrout(plural) · trouts(plural) · trouts(present, singular, third-person) · trouting(participle, present) · trouted(participle, past) · trouted(past)