shad
/ʃæd/
shad noun: any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
Noun
shad (plural shad or shads)
- Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
- Each river had its village and its iron bridge that the train crossed with a blast of its whistle, and the girls bathing in the icy water leaped like shad as it passed, unsettling travelers with their fleeting breasts.2003, Gabriel García Márquez, chapter 1, in Edith Grossman, transl., Living to Tell the Tale
- Any bluefish of the species Pomatomus saltatrix.
Proper noun capitalized: Shad
Shad (plural Shads)
- A surname.
shad meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Arabic and Vietnamese
shad in Tamil
- நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும்
shad in Urdu
- ہلسا مچھلی
shad in Arabic
- fishes of the herring family
- شَابُل šābul
shad in Vietnamese
- fishes of the herring family
- cá trích đầy mình
Forms of shad
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | shad |
| plural | shads |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Shads |
Origin of shad
From Middle English shadde, from Old English sċeadd, of uncertain origin. Compare Low German Schade (“shad, herring”), Scottish Gaelic sgadan (“herring”), Welsh ysgadan. Possibly from Scandinavian/North Germanic (compare dialectal Norwegian skadd (“small whitefish”), Old Norse skata (“kind of fish”)), but the order of borrowing is unclear and the ultimate origin of these words is obscure.
* As an Urdu and Persian surname, from شاد (šâd, “glad, cheerful”). This surname is mostly found in Pakistan. * As an English surname, from the noun shad. * As a German surname, Americanized from Schade, itself related to Schaden (“damage”).
Words formed from shad
- Agrakhan shad
- Alabama shad
- allis shad
- American shad
- Astrabad shad
- Azov shad
- Black Sea shad
- Caspian anadromous shad
- Caspian marine shad
- Caspian shad
- Enzeli shad
- European shad
- gizzard shad
- hickory shad
- Killarney shad
- Kura shad
- Laotian shad
- Macedonia shad
- North African shad
- Pontic shad
- Reeves' shad
- river shad
- Saposhnikovi shad
- shad-bellied
- shadbelly
- shadberry
- shadbird
- shadbush
- shad bush
- shadflower
- shadfly
- shad frog
- shad-spirit
- shad-waiter
- skipjack shad
- Thracian shad
- Toli shad
- twait shad
- twaite shad
- Volga shad
Phrases with shad
Words that rhyme with shad
Questions about shad
- What does shad mean?
- Shad means any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.
- What is shad in Tamil?
- Shad in Tamil is நமது பூமியில் காணப்படும், மீன் இனங்களில் ஒன்றாகும். See Shad meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is shad?
- Shad can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce shad?
- Shad is pronounced /ʃæd/.
- What is the plural of shad?
- The plural of shad is shad.
Words near shad in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shad (page history and authors); Shad (page history and authors); shad (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shad (Urdu 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shad.wav.
Cite this entry: “shad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.