eel

/iːl/

eel noun: any freshwater fish of the order Anguilliformes, which are elongated and resemble snakes.

Image: NasserHalaweh, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

eel (plural eels)

Any freshwater fish of the order Anguilliformes, which are elongated and resemble snakes.
- Off the United States, the National Marine Fisheries Service is helping industry explore fisheries for deep shrimp, rattails, chimeras, orange roughy, smoothheads, slackjaw eels, blue hake, skates and dogfish, which the National Fisheries Institute, an industry group, in an effort to improve their...1995 December 26, William J. Broad, “Creatures of the Deep Find Their Way to the Table”, in The New York Times
A European eel (Anguilla anguilla).
An electric eel (any knifefish of the genus Electrophorus)
A swamp eel (any fish in the family Synbranchidae).
An earthworm eel, also called the spineless eel (any fish in the family Chaudhuriidae).
A spiny eel (any fish in the family Mastacembelidae).
A deep-sea spiny eel (any fish in the family Notacanthidae).
A conger eel, also called the Congo eel, amphiuma, and Congo snake (any salamander of the genus Amphiuma).
A two-legged eel, also called the mud eel and lesser siren, Siren intermedia.
A leopard eel, also called the leopard siren and reticulated siren, Siren reticulata.
A rubber eel, Typhlonectes natans.
A vinegar eel, a roundworm of species Turbatrix aceti.
Someone or something that is sneaky and/or hard to catch.
- That Dennis is a right eel, he always seems to slip away from the scene at the right time.
- His expression when incredulous. "Why would you think that?" He was a slippery little eel.2003, Catherine Anderson, Only by Your Touch

Verb

eel (third-person singular simple present eels, present participle eeling, simple past and past participle eeled)

(intransitive) To fish for eels.
(intransitive) To move with a sinuous motion like that of an eel.

Proper noun capitalized: Eel

Eel

A township in Cass County, Indiana, United States, probably named after the Eel River.

eel meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

eel in Hindi

any fish of the order Anguilliformes: बाँब bāmb, बाम bām, सर्पमीन sarpamīn

eel in Tamil

any fish of the order Anguilliformes: விலாங்கு vilāṅku

eel in Marathi

any fish of the order Anguilliformes: बाम माछली bām māchlī

eel in Urdu

بام مچھلی

More languagesFewer languages

eel in Bengali: বানমাছ banomach
eel in Telugu: మలుగు చేప malugu cēpa
eel in Malayalam: ആരൽ āral, മനഞ്ഞില്മത്സ്യം manaññilmatsyaṁ, വഴുതിമാറുന്നവന് vaḻutimāṟunnavanŭ, വിലാഞ്ഞില് vilāññilŭ
eel in Kannada: ನೀರಹಾವು nīrahāvu
eel in Punjabi: ਬਾਮ bām
eel in Gujarati: બામ માછલી bām māchlī
eel in Sanskrit: ब्राह्मी brāhmī
eel in Assamese: বামী bami
eel in Nepali: ईल गर्न
eel in Tagalog: igat
eel in Arabic: أَنْقَلِيس ʔanqalīs, أَنْكَلِيس ʔankalīs
eel in Malay: belut, ikan mua
eel in Indonesian: belut, sidat, ikan mua
eel in Persian: مارماهی mârmâhi
eel in Thai: ปลาไหล bplaa lăi
eel in Vietnamese: cá chình
eel in Myanmar: ငါးရှဉ့် nga:hrany.
Dhivehi: ވެނ ven

Examples of eel in a sentence

A defaultist believes that the default interpretation of the phrase "some eels are fish" is the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish".
“We are the people that pull eel grass between our teeth to eat the herring roe.”
Ichthyohaemotoxin is the toxin found in eel serum; it is also known as fish serum toxin.

All 36 example sentences with eel

Forms of eel

Noun
plural	eels
Verb
third-person singular present	eels
present participle	eeling
past participle	eeled
past	eeled

Plural of eel: eels

Origin of eel

From Middle English el (“eel”), from Old English ǣl (“eel”), from Proto-West Germanic *āl (“eel”), from Proto-Germanic *ēlaz (“eel”), which is of unknown origin. Cognates Cognate with West Frisian iel (“eel”), Dutch aal (“eel”), German Low German Aal, Ool (“eel”), German Aal (“eel”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish ål (“eel”), Faroese állur, álur (“eel”), Icelandic áll (“eel”).

Words formed from eel

Phrases with eel

8 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with eel

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about eel

What does eel mean?: Eel means any freshwater fish of the order Anguilliformes, which are elongated and resemble snakes.
What is eel in Hindi?: Eel in Hindi is बाँब (bāmb), बाम (bām), सर्पमीन (sarpamīn). See Eel meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is eel?: Eel can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce eel?: Eel is pronounced /iːl/.
What is the plural of eel?: The plural of eel is eels.

Words near eel in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: eel (page history and authors); Eel (page history and authors); eel (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਬਾਮ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); eel (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-eel.ogg.

Cite this entry: “eel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/eel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.