spurling

See also: Spurling

English

Etymology

See sparling.

Noun

spurling (plural spurlings)

  1. (obsolete, UK, dialect) A tern.
  2. A smelt.
    • 1557 February 13, Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie., London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810, →OCLC:
      All-Saints do lay, for porke and sowse,
      for sprats and spurlings, for their house
    • 1842, W. H. Smyth, edited by Sir Edward Belcher, The Sailor's Word-Book: An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc, published 2019:
      CHERRY. A species of smelt or spurling, taken in the Frith of Tay.
    • 2016, Patrick Hanks, Richard Coates, Peter McClure, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, page 2502:
      Sparling / Variants: Spurling, Sperling, Spirling / […]  / denoting some kind of small fish, perhaps smelt, sprat, pilchard, or whiting. It may have been given to someone who caught, sold, or resembled such fish.

See also

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “spurling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

References
  • “spurling”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Anagrams
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