English
trout
Trout comes from Late Latin tructa ‘a kind of trout’.
- Late Latinc. 200–600 CEtructa‘a kind of trout’
- Old Englishc. 450–1150truht
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500troute
- Englishearliest quotation 1871trout
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Late Latinc. 200–600 CEtructa‘a kind of trout’
- Old Englishc. 450–1150truht
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500troute
- Englishearliest quotation 1871trout
Earliest quotation: 1871, James Grant, Under the Red Dragon: “God bless me! is it possible that you, a…”
The story
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.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *terh₁- ‘to rub, to turn’
turn, throw, thread, tournament, threshold, tragic, detrimental, thrash, tyrone, detriment, attrition, detour, tourney, termite, triage, tribulation, detritus, trite, tourniquet, thresher, thresh, truant, derma, tyro, 41 more
through Ancient Greek τρώγω ‘to gnaw’
Today it means
noun Any of several species of fish in Salmonidae, closely related to salmon, and distinguished by spawning more than once.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Late Latin tructa / trout