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stock-fish

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“

"We had a visit from one chap in the night," he added, "and as he was a hungry-looking rascal, he is a greater fool than I think him, or he will be back before long, after some of the beef and stock-fish of the wreck.

—Homeward Bound or, the Chase

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Definitions (2)

American Heritage Dictionary

Century Dictionary (2)

Certain gadoid fish which are cured by splitting and drying hard without salt, as cod, ling, hake, haddock, torsk, or cusk. Codfish are thus hard-dried in the air without salt most extensively in Norway and Greenland, but the art has not been acquired in the United States. From hense [Norway] is brought into all Europe a fysshe of the kindes of them whiche we caule haddockes or hakes, indurate and dryed with coulde, and beaten with clubbes or stockes, by reason whereof the Germayns caule them stockefysshe. R. Eden, tr. of Jacobus Ziglerus (First Books on America, [ed. Arber, p. 303). Cogan says of stockfish, “Concerning which fish I will say no more than Erasmus hath written in his Colloquio. There is a kind of fishe which is called in English Stockfish: it nourisheth no more than a stock.” … Stockfish whilst it is unbeaten is called Buckhorne, because it is so tough; when it is beaten upon the stock, it is termed stockfish. Quoted in Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), p. 155, note.
In fish-culture, fish adapted or used for stocking rivers, ponds, lakes, etc.

GNU Webster's 1913

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Examples (50)

London's as dead as a stock-fish. — Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Volume 5
-- If he had fallen into your hands you would have made a stock-fish of him. — Sir Thomas More, or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society
"He would make a stock-fish of me an he caught me. — Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby, and Silas Gough, Clerk
The stock-fish, I mean -- — The Book of Humorous Verse
I will write a few words on a dried stock-fish, for I have no paper, and you can take it from me to the — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen

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Etymologies (2)

Century Dictionary (2)

from Middle English stokefysche, stokfysche = D. Middle Low German stokvisch = Middle High German stocvisch, German stockfisch = Swedish stockfisk = Danish stokfisk; as stock, n., + fish. The exact sense in which stock is here used is uncertain; various views are reflected in the quotations.
from stock, n., 22, + fish.

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