Capelin

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fish of species Mallotus villosus, a type of smelt found in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

    "The birds are spread - so that we can see what they are like; and the men catching capelins are elevated up out of the umiak, where they practically float on the gunwale, so that we can perceive that they are the main figures and see their work-movements (fig. 250)."

  2. 2
    very small northern fish; forage for sea birds and marine mammals and other fishes wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
capelancaplinfish

Example

More examples

"The birds are spread - so that we can see what they are like; and the men catching capelins are elevated up out of the umiak, where they practically float on the gunwale, so that we can perceive that they are the main figures and see their work-movements (fig. 250)."

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French capelan, from Provençal and Old Occitan capelan, from Late Latin cappellānus (“chaplain”). Doublet of chaplain.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.