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minnow

Pronunciation: /ˈmɪnəʊ/

The English word “minnow” has 12 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Any of certain small fish.
  2. The common minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus), a small freshwater fish of the carp family Cyprinidae which has a green back with black elongated blotches, commonly swimming in large shoals.
  3. Chiefly with a qualifying word: That fish or any of a number of other (small) fish from the family Cyprinidae.
  4. Any of those fish or other small (usually freshwater) fish from other families.
  5. Synonym of galaxiid (“any member of the family Galaxiidae of mostly small freshwater fish of the Southern Hemisphere”); specifically, the common galaxias, inanga, or jollytail (Galaxias maculatus).
  6. Synonym of stickleback (family Gasterosteidae).
  7. A person or thing of relatively little consequence, importance, or value.
  8. a team that is considered less skilled and not expected to win many, if any, of its matches.
  9. An artificial bait in the form of a small fish.

adjective

  1. Very small; tiny.

verb

  1. To fish for minnows (noun sense 1 and subsenses).
  2. To fish, especially for trout, using minnows as bait.

Etymology

The noun is derived from Late Middle English menew, menowe (“small fish; (specifically) common minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus); or stickleback (possibly the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus)”), from Old English *mynwe, an oblique form of *mynu, a variant of myne (“minnow; small fish”), from Proto-West Germanic *muniwu (“minnow; small fish”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“small”).…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.