salmon

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various large food and game fishes of the genera Salmo and Oncorhynchus, of northern waters, having delicate pinkish flesh and characteristically swimming from salt to fresh water to spawn.
2. n. A moderate, light, or strong yellowish pink to a moderate reddish orange or light orange.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A fish of the genus Salmo (S. salar), found in all the northern parts of Europe, America, and Asia. The salmon is both a marine and a fresh-water fish. Its normal locality may be said to be off the mouth or estuary of the larger rivers, whence, in the season of sexual excitement, it ascends to the spawning-beds, which are frequently far inland, near the head-waters of the rivers. On reaching the spawning-station, the female by means of her tail makes a furrow in the gravelly bed of the river, in which she deposits her spawn or eggs, numbering many thousands, which, when impregnated by the male accompanying her, she carefully covers up by rapid sweeps of her tail. At this season the snout of the male undergoes a strange transformation, the under jaw becoming hooked upward with a cartilaginous excrescence, which is used as a weapon in the combats which are frequent when two or more males attach themselves to one female. In this condition he is known as a kipper. The time occupied in spawning is from three to twelve days, and the season extends from the end of autumn till spring. After spawning, the salmon, both male and female, die or go to sea under the name of spent fish, foul fish, or kelts, the females being further distinguished as shedders or baggits. In from 80 to 140 days the young fish hatches from the egg. Then it is about five eighths of an inch long. In this embryonic state it is nourished from a vitellicle, or umbilical vesicle, suspended under the belly, containing the red yolk of the egg and oil-globules, to be absorbed later. When about fifty days old it is about an inch in length, and becomes a samlet or parr (see cut under parr.) It continues in the shallows of its native stream till the following spring, when it is from 3 to 4 inches long and is known as the May parr. It now descends into deeper parts of the river, where the weaker fish remain till the end of the second spring, the stronger ones till the end of the first spring only. When the season of its migration arrives, generally the month of May or June, the fins have become darker, and the fish has assumed a silvery hue. It is now known as a smolt or salmon-fry. The smolts now congregate into shoals and proceed leisurely seaward. On reaching the estuary they remain in its brackish water for a short time, and then proceed to the open sea. Of their life there nothing is known, except that they grow with such rapidity that a fish which reaches the estuary weighing, it may be, not more than 2 ounces, may return to it from the sea, after a few months, as a grilse, weighing 8 or 10 pounds. A grilse under 2 pounds is called a salmon-peal. In between two and three years the grilse becomes a salmon. The salmon returns in preference to the river in which it passed its earlier existence. It has been known to grow to the weight of 83 pounds; more generally it weighs from 15 to 25 pounds. It furnishes a delicious dish for the table, and is an important article of commerce. Its flesh is of a pinkish-orange color. The synonyms of salmon are very numerous. Nearly or quite exact local ones are mort, simen, sprod. Salmon under two years old, which have not entered the sea, are generally called parr, pink, and smolt, or, more locally, black-fin, brandling, brood, cocksper, fingerling, ginkin, graveling, gravel-laspring, hepper, jerkin, laspring, salmon-fry, salmon-spring, samlet, skegger, skerling, smelt, sparling, sprag. One which has returned from the sea a second time is a gerling; one which has remained in fresh water during summer is a laurel; a milter, or spawning male, may be called a gib-fish or summer-cock. In the Ribble, in Willughby's time, a two-year old salmon was called sprod; a supposed three-year fish mort, or perhaps pug; a four-year fish, a forktail; a five-year fish, a half-fish, and a six-year one, a salmon specifically.
2. n. One of various fishes of the same family as the above, but of different genera. Some of these species are recognizable by an increased number of the anal rays (14 to 20), and by the fact that the jaws in the males at the breeding-season become peculiarly developed and hooked. They form the genus Oncorhynchus, and are collectively called Pacific salmon. Five such species occur in the North Pacific.
3. n. One of various fishes, not of the family Salmonidæ, suggestive of or mistaken for a salmon. A sciænoid fish, Cynoscion maculatus. See squeteague.
4. n. The upper bricks in a kiln, which in firing receive the least heat: so called from their color.
5. To sicken or poison with salmon, as dogs.
6. n. See sauqui.

Wiktionary

1. n. One of several species of fish of the Salmonidae family.
2. n. A yellowish pink colour, the colour of cooked salmon.
3. n. Cockney rhyming slang snout (tobacco; from salmon and trout)
4. adj. Having a yellowish pink colour.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) Any one of several species of fishes of the genus Salmo and allied genera. The common salmon (Salmo salar) of Northern Europe and Eastern North America, and the California salmon, or quinnat, are the most important species. They are extensively preserved for food. See quinnat.
2. n. A reddish yellow or orange color, like the flesh of the salmon.
3. adj. Of a reddish yellow or orange color, like that of the flesh of the salmon.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any of various large food and game fishes of northern waters; usually migrate from salt to fresh water to spawn
2. n. a pale pinkish orange color
3. adj. of orange tinged with pink
4. n. flesh of any of various marine or freshwater fish of the family Salmonidae
5. n. a tributary of the Snake River in Idaho