alewife
UK/ˈeɪlwʌɪf/US/ˈeɪlˌwaɪf/
alewife noun: a woman who keeps an alehouse.
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Noun (1)
alewife (plural alewives)
Noun (2)
alewife (plural alewives)
- A migrating North American fish, Alosa pseudoharengus.
- In his System of Nature, A. D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the...1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Cetology”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 147
- I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a narrow beach, a handsome but shallow lake of some four hundred acres, […] and, after the alewives had passed into it, it had stopped up its outlet, and now the alewives were dying by thousands, and the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence as...1865, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “The Shipwreck”, in [Sophia Thoreau; William Ellery Channing], editors, Cape Cod, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 14
- Any of several species similar in appearance.
alewife meaning in Tamil
alewife in Tamil
- நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும்
Synonyms of alewife
Forms of alewife
| plural | alewives |
|---|
Origin of alewife
From ale + wife.
Unknown. Possibly from aloof, the Narragansett name of a fish. See Winthrop on the culture of maize in America, “Phil Trans.” No. 142, p. 1065, and Baddam’s “Memoirs,” vol. ii. p. 131. Possibly from allowes (“a type of shad”), from French alose (“shad”), from Old French [Term?], from Late Latin alausa, influenced by Etymology 1 due to large belly of the fish.
Words formed from alewife
- Alewife Brook
Questions about alewife
- What does alewife mean?
- Alewife means a woman who keeps an alehouse.
- What is alewife in Tamil?
- Alewife in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும். See Alewife meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is alewife?
- Alewife is a noun.
- How do you pronounce alewife?
- Alewife is pronounced /ˈeɪlwʌɪf/ (UK).
- What is the plural of alewife?
- The plural of alewife is alewives.
Words near alewife in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: alewife (page history and authors); alewife (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “alewife.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/alewife. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.