Definition of "mackerel"

Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,

1. typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • […] you may buy land now as cheap as stinking mackerel.

     c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene iv]

   • I am living fast, to see the Time, when a Book that misses its Tide, shall be neglected, as the Moon by Day, or like Mackarel a Week after the Season.

     1704, [Jonathan Swift], A Tale of a Tub. […], London: […] John Nutt, […], page 215

   • Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

     1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients

   • He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel’s back.

     1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 6, in Lud-in-the-Mist‎, London: Millennium, published 2000, page 68

   • “ […] if you ever so much as breathe a word about my stories, Sandman’s comin’ after you the very same minute to pluck out you eyes like a mackerel for soup.”

     1982, Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Chapter 5, in Zami; Sister Outsider; Undersong, New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993, p. 47

A true mackerel, any fish of tribe Scombrini (Scomber spp., Rastrelliger spp.)  examples

Certain other similar small fish in families Carangidae, Gempylidae, and Hexagrammidae.  examples

(obsolete) A pimp; also, a bawd.  quotations