Word.ws English Dictionary

sawbelly

sawbelly noun: a fish, the alewife.

Noun

sawbelly (plural sawbellies)

  1. (US) A fish, the alewife.
    • Every few minutes an eagle would reach daintily into the water and pluck a dead sawbelly from the half-frozen soup. Sawbellies, or alewives, are fish that do not grow that big. A full day of dipping one’s naked talons into frigid slush might yield a decent mealful.1990 January 2, Rick Marsi, “The Russian bear can’t beat the Tier’s gray fox”, in Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., →ISSN, page 1D, column 4

Forms of sawbelly

pluralsawbellies

Origin of sawbelly

From saw + belly?

Questions about sawbelly

What does sawbelly mean?
Sawbelly means a fish, the alewife.
What part of speech is sawbelly?
Sawbelly is a noun.
What is the plural of sawbelly?
The plural of sawbelly is sawbellies.

Words near sawbelly in the dictionary

  1. Sawaya
  2. Sawayas
  3. sawback
  4. sawbacks
  5. sawbellies
  6. sawbelly
  7. sawbench
  8. sawbenches
  9. sawbill
  10. sawbills
  11. sawblade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sawbelly (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: “sawbelly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sawbelly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.