Alewife

Definitions

1. A woman who keeps an alehouse.
   archaic
2. A migrating North American fish, Alosa pseudoharengus.
3. Any of several species similar in appearance.

Equivalents

Examples

“In his System of Nature, A. D. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate⟳ the whales from the fish⟳.” But of my own⟳ knowledge, I know⟳ that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express⟳ edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.”

“I saw⟳ in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a narrow beach, a handsome but shallow lake of some four hundred acres, […] and, after the alewives had passed into it, it had stopped up its outlet, and now the alewives were dying by thousands, and the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence as the water evaporated.”

“Alewives are anadromous fish⟳: Born in freshwater, they spend⟳ their lives in the ocean, returning annually to their birthplaces to spawn. Until colonial-era dams cut⟳ off their migration, hundreds of thousands of alewives would have⟳ come⟳ pouring into Rogers Lake [Connecticut, USA] every spring⟳ — and into other lakes like⟳ it along much of the Eastern Seaboard. Farmers used to apply⟳ them to their fields as fertilizer, and all along the coast, river herring festivals celebrated their arrival.”

CEFR level