| Remarks |
'minnow', Middle English 'menawe'; akin to Old English 'myne', i.e., 'minnow', Old High German 'munewa', i.e., a kind of fish (Ref. 27888); 'shark', of obscure origins but appears to have been introduced to English in the late 1560s by members of Sir John Hawkins' expedition (a ballad of 1569 recorded 'There is no proper name for [the fish] that I know, but that certain men of Captain Hawkins' doth call it a shark'), but it is not known where they got it from. A resemblance to Austrian dialect 'schirk', i.e., sturgeon has been noted (p. 471 in Ref. 11979). |