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Added 9 October 2026

salmon

/ˈsæmən/ noun

In Latin: salmō Wiktionary

noun Definition from WordNet 3.1, Princeton University. Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about salmon at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

Any of various large food and game fishes of northern waters; usually migrate from salt to fresh water to spawn.
A tributary of the Snake River in Idaho.
Flesh of any of various marine or freshwater fish of the family Salmonidae.

adjective

Of orange tinged with pink.

Origin

From Middle English samoun, samon, saumon, from Anglo-Norman saumon, from Old French saumon, from Latin salmō, salmōn-. Widely displaced native Middle English lax, from Old English leax (whence modern dialectal lax). The unpronounced l was later inserted to make the word appear closer to its Latin root (compare words like debt, indict, receipt for the same spelling Latinizations). The verb sense “ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street” alludes to salmon swimming upstream against the flow of a river to spawn.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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