mossbunker

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Definitions (2)

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  1. noun See menhaden.

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Etymologies (2)

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  1. Dutch marsbanker.

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  1. Also mossbonker, mossbanker, massbanker, marshbunker, marshbanker, morsebonker, morsbunker, mousebunker, etc., and abbreviation bunker, in earlier form marsbancker (1679), from Dutch marsbanker, the scad or horse-mackerel, Caranx trachurus, which annually visits the shores of northern Europe in immense schools, and swims at the surface in much the same manner as the mossbunker — this name being transferred by the Dutch of New York to the fish now so called (it occurs so applied, in the form masbank, in a Dutch poem by Jacob Steedman in 1661). The D. marsbanker (Gronovius, 1754) is not in the dictionaries. Its formation is not clear; apparently from mars, a peddler's pack (or mas, a mass, crowd), + bank, bank, + -er (= English -er); prob. in allusion to its appearance in schools.
 

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/ˈmɔsbəŋkər/
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