Grilse
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A young salmon after its first return from the sea.
"[T]hey ca' it fasting when they hae the best o' fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, gilses, salmon, and a' the lave o't, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]"
Example
More examples"[T]hey ca' it fasting when they hae the best o' fish frae Hartlepool and Sunderland by land carriage, forbye trouts, gilses, salmon, and a' the lave o't, and so they make their very fasting a kind of luxury and abomination; […]"
Etymology
From Middle English grills, grilles, of unknown origin. Cognate with Scots grils, grissill, girls (“young salmon”). Compare English grawl, Scots grawl, graulse (“young salmon, grilse”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.