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kipper: msg#00014

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: kipper

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The Word of the Day for July 15 is:

kipper \KIP-er\ noun
1 : a male salmon or sea trout during or after the spawning season
*2 : a kippered herring or salmon

Example sentence:
The traditional British breakfast of kippers and eggs was threatened in
the 1980s, when overfishing by foreign ships seriously depleted herring stocks
in the North Sea.

Did you know?
An American visiting Scotland once reported to _The New York Times_ that
"a kipper is prepared by taking a herring fresh (no more than 24 hours out of
the water), plump, oily (15 percent or more fat content is best), soaking it in
a saltwater brine and smoking it slowly over a fire composed of oak chips."
This process of creating a kipper (called "kippering") goes back to at least
the 18th century, but the word "kipper" dates all the way back to before the
12th century, when it was spelled "cypera" and was used specifically to mean "a
spawning salmon." "Cypera" is related to the Old English word for copper
("coper") and may have been suggested by the salmon's color.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.







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