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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

leister.

A spear armed with three or more barbed prongs for catching fish, particularly salmon.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈliːstə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlistɚ/General-American
  1. A spear armed with three or more barbed prongs for catching fish, particularly salmon.

Where this word comes from

From earlier leyster, lister, perhaps via Middle English *lēster, *līster, from Old Norse ljóstr (“leister”), from ljósta (“to smite, strike; to hit, strike (with an arrow or spear)”), from Proto-Germanic *leustaną (“to hit, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European *lew-s- (“to loosen (by knocking)”); the word is cognate with Danish lyster (“fish spear, gig, leister”), Icelandic ljósta (“to hit, strike”), Norwegian Bokmål lyster (dialectal Norwegian lioster), Swedish ljuster.

verb/ˈliːstə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈlistɚ/General-American
  1. To catch or spear (fish) with a leister.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From earlier leyster, lister, perhaps via Middle English *lēster, *līster, from Old Norse ljóstr (“leister”), from ljósta (“to smite, strike; to hit, strike (with an arrow or spear)”), from Proto-Germanic *leustaną (“to hit, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European *lew-s- (“to loosen (by knocking)”); the word is cognate with Danish lyster (“fish spear, gig, leister”), Icelandic ljósta (“to hit, strike”), Norwegian Bokmål lyster (dialectal Norwegian lioster), Swedish ljuster.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.