trout

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: From Middle English troute, troughte, trught, trouȝt, trouhte, partly from Old English truht (“trout”), and partly from Old French truite; both from Late Latin tructa, perhaps from Ancient Greek τρώκτης (trṓktēs, “nibbler”), from τρώγω (trṓgō, “to gnaw”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, to turn”). The Internet verb sense originated on BBSes of the 1980s, probably from Monty Python's The Fish-Slapping Dance (1972), though that sketch involved a halibut.

1. Any of several species of fish in Salmonidae, closely related to salmon, and distinguished by spawning more than once.

   “Many anglers consider trout to be the archetypical quarry.”

   “Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet:[…].”

2. An objectionable elderly woman.

   “Look, you silly old trout, you can't keep bringing home cats! You can't afford the ones you have!”

   “But French observers were perplexed not just by the Benny Hill-style frenzy, but by the ensuing British tabloid handwringing about how unfair it was that the UK's women ministers were such a load of ugly trouts compared to Sarkozy's sexy French ladies.”

verb

Etymology: From Middle English troute, troughte, trught, trouȝt, trouhte, partly from Old English truht (“trout”), and partly from Old French truite; both from Late Latin tructa, perhaps from Ancient Greek τρώκτης (trṓktēs, “nibbler”), from τρώγω (trṓgō, “to gnaw”), from Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- (“to rub, to turn”). The Internet verb sense originated on BBSes of the 1980s, probably from Monty Python's The Fish-Slapping Dance (1972), though that sketch involved a halibut.

1. To fish for trout.

   “God bless me! is it possible that you, a tall fellow with a black moustache, can be the curly fair-haired boy I have so often carried on my back and saddle-bow, and taught to make flies of red spinner and drakes’ wings, when we trouted together at Llyn Cwellyn among the hills yonder?”

   “We found not more than three birds in any one place, and many times only one old bird, and this where we knew they had bred, for our pointer Rex found them while we were trouting.”

2. To (figuratively) slap someone with a slimy, stinky, wet trout; to admonish jocularly.