Sawbelly

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fish, the alewife. US

    "Every few minutes an eagle would reach daintily into the water and pluck a dead sawbelly from the half-frozen soup. Sawbellies, or alewives, are fish that do not grow that big. A full day of dipping one’s naked talons into frigid slush might yield a decent mealful."

Example

More examples

"Every few minutes an eagle would reach daintily into the water and pluck a dead sawbelly from the half-frozen soup. Sawbellies, or alewives, are fish that do not grow that big. A full day of dipping one’s naked talons into frigid slush might yield a decent mealful."

Etymology

From saw + belly?

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