kipper: [OE] There is a single Old English instance, in a text of around the year 1000, of a fish called cypera. The context suggests that this was a ‘salmon’, which would tie in with the later use of the word kipper, from the 16th to the 20th centuries, for ‘male salmon during the spawning season’. What is not clear, however, despite the obvious semantic link ‘fish’, is whether this is the same word as kipper ‘cured herring or other fish’, first recorded in the 14th century.
Nor is it altogether clear where the term originally came from, although it is usually held to be a derivative of Old English copor ‘copper’, in allusion to the colour of the fish.
kipper (n.)
Old English cypera "male salmon," perhaps related to coper "reddish-brown metal" (see copper), on resemblance of color. Another theory connects it to kip, name for the sharp, hooked lower jaw of the male salmon in breeding season, from Middle English kippen "to snatch, tug, pull." The modern word usually refers to kippered herring, from a verb meaning "to cure a fish by cleaning, salting, and spicing it" (early 14c.). The theory is that this originally was done to salmon, hence the name.
双语例句
1. Sonar, Kipper and Bottlenose were waiting for Seaweed.
