menhaden

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of several species of fish of the genus Brevoortia, especially B. tyrannus of American Atlantic and Gulf waters, used as a source of fish oil, fertilizer, and bait. Also called mossbunker, pogy.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A clupeoid fish, Brevoortia tyrannus. It has the appearance of a shad, but is still more compressed, has a large head, and the scales are closely imbricated, leaving a high narrow surface exposed, whiletheir posterior margins are pectinated. The jaws and mouth are toothless, and there is a deep median emargination of the upper jaw. The intestinal canal is very long, and the chief food is obtained from mud taken into the stomach. It is one of the most important economic fishes of the eastern coast of the United States; it ranges from 25 to 45 north latitude, and in the summer occurs in the coast-waters of all the Atlantic States from Maine to Florida, but in winter only south of Cape Hatteras. It is the most abundant fish on the eastern coast of the United States. Formerly it was used almost solely for manure, but large quantities are now converted into oil, and many-are canned in oil, to be sold as “sardines,” like the European fishes so named. It attains a length of from 12 to 16 inches, is bluish above with silvery or brassy sides, the fins usually tinged yellowish or greenish, and has a dark scapular blotch, often with smaller spots behind it. It varies a good deal in details of form and color with age, and to some extent with season and locality. This fish has at least 30 dilferent popular names in the United States, the leading ones being mossbunker, with many variants (see mossbunker), pogie or pogy and its variants, alewife or oldwife, whiting or whitefish, bony-fish, bugfish (which see), hardhead, fatback, chebog. pilchard (a misnomer), schooly, shiner, pauhagen (poghaden, pookagan, etc.), yellowtail, qreen-tailed shad, shadine (as put up in oil), and sardine. The name menhaden extends in literary use to all the other species of Brevoortia, of which there are several, as B. patronus of the Gulf of Mexico; and it is locally misapplied to the thread-herring, Opisthonema thrissa. See cut under Brevoortia.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any of several species of fish in the genera Brevoortia and Ethmidium, used for fish meal, fish oil, fertilizer, and bait.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) An American marine fish (Brevoortia tyrannus) of the Herring family (Clupeidae), chiefly valuable for its oil and as a component of fertilizers; -- called also mossbunker, bony fish, chebog, pogy, hardhead, whitefish, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. shad-like North American marine fishes used for fish meal and oil and fertilizer