tangfish

English

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Etymology

tang (“seaweed”) +‎ fish

Noun

tangfish (plural not attested)

(UK, dialect) A common or harbour seal (Phoca vitulina).
- 1813-1831, Brewster, David (1781-1868), Second American Edition of the New Edinburgh Encyclopædia, New York: Samuel Whiting and John L. Tiffany [and others], page 128:
  The coasts of Shetland swarm with the smaller seals, or Tangfish, so named from being supposed to live among the Tang, or larger fuci that grow near the shore.
- 1863, Sidney Hall, Guide to the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland Including Orkney and Shetland, page 791:
  a noted retreat of seals or selkies, or tangfish, as they are vernacularly called in Zetland
- 2015, Victoria Dickenson, Seal, page 95:
  On the rugged shores of Orkney there are two kinds of seal – the common seal or 'tangfish' (seaweed fish) of the Shetlands […] and the great grey seal

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “tangfish”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References

“tangfish”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams

shafting