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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

salmon.

One of several species of fish, typically of the Salmoninae subfamily, brownish above with silvery sides and delicate pinkish-orange flesh; they ascend rivers to spawn.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsæmən/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsæmən/General-American[ˈsɛəmən]General-American, æ-tensing/ˈsæmən/Australia
  1. One of several species of fish, typically of the Salmoninae subfamily, brownish above with silvery sides and delicate pinkish-orange flesh; they ascend rivers to spawn.

    countable · uncountable
    grilled salmon
    salmon paté
  2. A meal or dish made from this fish.

    uncountable
  3. A pale pinkish-orange colour, the colour of cooked salmon.

    countable · uncountable
  4. The upper bricks in a kiln which receive the least heat.

    countable · uncountable
  5. snout (tobacco; from salmon and trout)

    Cockney · countable · slang · uncountable
  6. canned fish, usually mackerel.

    Sri-Lanka · countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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.

adj/ˈsæmən/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsæmən/General-American[ˈsɛəmən]General-American, æ-tensing/ˈsæmən/Australia
  1. Having a pale pinkish-orange colour.

    not-comparable
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/ˈsæmən/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsæmən/General-American[ˈsɛəmən]General-American, æ-tensing/ˈsæmən/Australia
  1. To ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street.

    intransitive · slang
Where this word comes from

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.

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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.