# mackerel
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈmæk(ə)ɹəl/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Hyphenation: mack‧e‧rel,
mack‧erel
* Rhymes: -ækɹəl

### Etymology 1

From Middle English mackerell, macrell, macrelle, makarell, makerel, makerell, makerelle, makrel, makrell, makyrelle, from Old French maquerel. Further origin unknown.

#### Noun

mackerel (countable and uncountable, plural mackerel or mackerels)
* Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,
** typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.
*** c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]:[…] you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.
*** 1704, [Jonathan Swift], A Tale of a Tub. […], London: […] John Nutt, […], →OCLC, page 215:I am living fast, to see the Time, when a Book that misses its Tide, shall be neglected, as the Moon by Day, or like Mackarel a Week after the Season.
*** 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.
*** 1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 6, in Lud-in-the-Mist‎, London: Millennium, published 2000, page 68:He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel’s back.
*** 1982, Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Chapter 5, in Zami; Sister Outsider; Undersong, New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993, p. 47,
    “ […] if you ever so much as breathe a word about my stories, Sandman’s comin’ after you the very same minute to pluck out you eyes like a mackerel for soup.”
* A true mackerel, any fish of tribe Scombrini (Scomber spp., Rastrelliger spp.)
* Certain other similar small fish in families Carangidae, Gempylidae, and Hexagrammidae.

##### Derived terms

* Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus spp.)
* Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus)
* butterfly mackerel (Gasterochisma melampus)
* cero mackerel (Scomberomorus regalis)
* chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus)
* cold as a mackerel
* common mackerel (Scomber scombrus)
* dead as a mackerel
* double-lined mackerel (Grammatorcynus bilineatus)
* holy mackerel
* horse mackerel
* jack mackerel (Trachurus spp.)
* king mackerel (Scomberomorus cavalla)
* mackerel bird (Jynx torquilla)
* mackerel breeze
* mackerel cock (Puffinus puffinus)
* mackereler
* mackerel gale
* mackerel gull (Sterninae spp.)
* mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari)
* mackerelled
* mackerelling
* mackerelly
* mackerel midge (Gadidae spp.)
* mackerel mint
* mackerel pike, mackerel-pike (Scomberesocidae spp.)
* mackerel scad (Decapterus macarellus)
* mackerel shad (Decapterus spp.)
* mackerel shark (Lamniformes spp.)
* mackerel sky
* mackerel sky and mare's-tails make lofty ships carry low sails, mackerel sky and mare's-tails make tall ships carry low sails
* mackerel snapper
* mackerel tuna (Euthynnus alletteratus)
* snake mackerel (Gempylus serpens, Gempylidae spp.)
* Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorini spp.)
* stink like a mackerel
* throw a sprat to catch a mackerel
* tinker mackerel (Scomber colias)
* yellow mackerel (Caranx crysos)

##### Descendants

* Sylheti: ꠝꠦꠇꠞꠥꠟ (mexrul)

##### See also

* scombral
* scombroid
* tuna

#### References

* mackerel on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* Scombridae on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
* Category:Scombridae on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

### Etymology 2

From Middle English makerel, maquerel, from Old French maquerel, from Middle Dutch makelare, makelaer (“broker”) (> makelaar (“broker, peddler”)). See also French maquereau.

#### Noun

mackerel (plural mackerels)
* (obsolete) A pimp; also, a bawd.
** 1483, William Caxton, Magnus Cato, quoted in James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, publ. by John Russell Smith (1847), page 536.
    […] nyghe his hows dwellyd a maquerel or bawde […]
** 1980, The Police Journal, Volume 53 (page 257) doi:10.1177/0032258X8005300305 (also available at Google books)
    NETTING MACKEREL: THE PIMP DETAIL
** 1981, Peter Gammond, Raymond Horricks, Big Bands, page 15:Hundreds of ‘night birds’ and their ‘mackerels’ and other vice-pushers were sent packing.
** 2006, Paul Crowley, Message-ID: <ciGug.11527$j7.319767@news.indigo.ie> in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
    A procurer or a pimp is a broker (or broker-between), a mackerel, or a pandar; the last is not necessarily-and, indeed, not usually-a professional.
** 2009, Jeffery Klaehn, Roadblocks to Equality‎, →ISBN, page 118:You can't 'work' in a legal brothel without mackerel.
** 2012, J. Robert Janes, Mayhem‎, →ISBN:Perhaps, but my sources think the mackerel knew of this girl but she didn't know of him.