Word.ws English Dictionary

esca

/ˈɛskə/

esca noun: the fleshy growth from an anglerfish's head that acts as a lure for its prey.

Noun (1)

esca (plural escae)

  1. The fleshy growth from an anglerfish's head that acts as a lure for its prey.
    Synonyms:
    illicium
  2. A fungal disease afflicting grapes.
    Synonyms:
    black measles

Noun (2)

esca (plural escas)

  1. (historical) A traditional Galician unit of dry measure, equivalent to about 6–9 L depending on the substance measured.
  2. (historical) A kind of measuring cup once used for measuring escas of grain.

Noun (3) capitalized: ESCA

ESCA (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis.
    Synonyms:
    XPS

Synonyms of esca

Forms of esca

pluralescae
pluralescas

Origin of esca

From Latin ēsca (“bait”).

From Galician escá, from Hispanic Late Latin scala (“bowl”) attested in Isidore of Seville, probably from Suevic, from Proto-Germanic *skēlō (“bowl”). Cognate with German Schale and Dutch schaal.

Questions about esca

What does esca mean?
Esca means the fleshy growth from an anglerfish's head that acts as a lure for its prey.
What part of speech is esca?
Esca is a noun.
How do you pronounce esca?
Esca is pronounced /ˈɛskə/.
What is the plural of esca?
The plural of esca is escae.

Words near esca in the dictionary

  1. ESBLs
  2. ESBs
  3. ESC
  4. Esc key
  5. Esc keys
  6. esca
  7. escabeche
  8. escabeches
  9. escadrille
  10. escadrilles
  11. escae

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: esca (page history and authors); ESCA (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.

Last updated:

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