shark

Meanings

Noun

• A scaleless, predatory fish of the superorder Selachimorpha, with a cartilaginous skeleton and 5 to 7 gill slits on each side of its head.
• Someone who exploits others, for example by trickery, lies, usury, extortion.
• A sleazy and amoral lawyer.
• An ambulance chaser.
• A relentless and resolute person or group, especially in business.
• A very good poker or pool player. Compare fish (a bad poker player).
• A person who feigns ineptitude to win money from others.

Verb

• To fish for sharks.
• To steal or obtain through fraud.
• To play the petty thief; to practice fraud or trickery; to swindle.
• To live by shifts and stratagems.
• To pick or gather indiscriminately or covertly.

Related

Similar words

• haye
• hustler

Origin

• From Middle English shark (used by Thomas Beckington in 1442 to refer to a kind of fish), of uncertain origin. Most likely from a semantic extension of the German-derived shark, see below. The fish was originally called a dogfish or haye in English and Middle English.
• Some older dictionaries derived the word from Latin carcharias, carcharus (from Ancient Greek), but admit that "the requisite [Old French] forms intermediate between E. shark and L. carcharus are not found, and it is not certain that the name [shark] was orig. applied to the fish; it may have been first used of a greedy man".
• Other older authorities speculated that the word might derive from Yucatec Maya xoc ("fish") (), as John Hawkins brought a specimen from the area where Mayan was spoken to England in the 1560s. However, the 1442 use rules out a New World origin for the word.
• From German Schurke ("scoundrel"); compare Dutch schurk.
• Probably from the "steal" senses above, but perhaps related to shear. Compare shirk.