Atherins

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Small slender fish of the silverside family, often found in coastal and brackish waters
2. Slender silvery marine or freshwater fish belonging to the family Atherinidae
3. Small fishes with a silvery stripe along the side, classed among the silversides

Etymology: Atherins are small silverside fishes, and the name reaches English through Latin from ancient Greek. The Greek "atherine" (ἀθερίνη) was a term for a small fish, and it is a diminutive of "athēr," which meant "barley-grain" or, by extension, "awn" or the bristle on a grain ear, a reference to the fish's slender, grain-like shape. Naturalists in the 18th and 19th centuries borrowed the Greek name as a scientific label for the group, and the family Atherinidae was later named from it. The plural "atherins" is simply the ordinary English plural of the noun "atherin," so the word is a straightforward borrowing with no change in sense from its Greek source. Its meaning has stayed fixed: a fish of the silverside family, now used for both the group and individual species.

Synonyms: silverside