trout

Meanings

Noun

• Any of several species of fish in Salmonidae, closely related to salmon, and distinguished by spawning more than once.
• An objectionable elderly woman.

Verb

• To (figuratively) slap someone with a slimy, stinky, wet trout; to admonish jocularly.

Origin

• From Middle English troute, troughte, trught, trouȝt, trouhte, partly from Old English truht, and partly from Old French truite; both from Late Latin tructa, perhaps from Ancient Greek τρώκτης ("nibbler"), from τρώγω, 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.