shad

From Old English sceadd, possibly from Celtic (compare Scottish Gaelic sgadan (“herring”), Welsh ysgadan) or from Scandinavian/North Germanic (compare dialectal Norwegian skadd (“small whitefish”), Old Norse skata (“kind of fish”)), but the order of borrowing is unclear and the ultimate origin of these words is obscure.

• IPA^(key): /ʃæd/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æd

shad (plural shad or shads)

1. Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
   • 2003, Edith Grossman, translator, Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale, Chapter 1

     Each river had its village and its iron bridge that the train crossed with a blast of its whistle, and the girls bathing in the icy water leaped like shad as it passed, unsettling travelers with their fleeting breasts.

2. (South Africa) The bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix).

• MacBain, Alexander; Mackay, Eneas (1911), “sgadan”, in An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, Stirling, →ISBN

• ADHs, Dash, SAHD, Sadh, dahs, dash

From Middle English shoed, past participle of shon.

shad

1. shod

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 66