salmon

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A large fish with pink-orange flesh that swims up rivers to lay eggs; it is a popular food.

   We had grilled salmon with lemon for dinner.

2. 2
   adj

   Having a pale pinkish-orange colour.

   She painted the bedroom walls a soft salmon colour.

3. 3
   noun

   A pale pinkish-orange colour.

   The sunset turned the sky a warm shade of salmon.

From Middle English samoun, samon, saumon, from Anglo-Norman saumon, from Old French saumon, from Latin salmō, salmōn-. Widely displaced native Middle English lax, from Old English leax (whence modern dialectal lax). The unpronounced l was later inserted to make the word appear closer to its Latin root (compare words like debt, indict, receipt for the same spelling Latinizations). The verb sense “ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street” alludes to salmon swimming upstream against the flow of a river to spawn.

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