Definition
nounOne of several species of fish, typically of the Salmoninae subfamily, brownish above with silvery sides and delicate pinkish-orange flesh; they ascend rivers to spawn.
nounA meal or dish made from this fish.
Sentence Examples
The rest of us all had the smoked salmon.
The fish tasted like salmon.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Got any salmon?"
— 1992, “Ebeneezer Goode”, performed by The Shamen:
"Tinned mackerel is confusingly called ‘salmon’ in Sri Lanka. So this dish, in Sinhalese, is salmon hodi, or salmon in gravy. Now that I think on it, all tinned fish in Sri Lanka is called salmon."
— 2018 July 29, Chath Ginige, “Spicy Mackerel Curry”, in akkis kitchen (blog), archived from the original on 23 Jul 2019:
"With a thick gravy made up of onions, tomatoes, spices, and coconut milk this Sri Lankan salmon curry might breathe new life to those canned mackerels on your shelf."
— 2018, Jehan Yusoof, “Sri Lankan canned fish curry(tin fish).”, in Island Smile (blog), archived from the original on 18 Jun 2025:
"We manufacture canned markerel fish (salmon)"
— 2023 April 25, u/LNPOVCO, “What is the liquid in local canned salmon tins?”, in Reddit, r/srilanka:
"Smiley and Guillam perched disconsolately beneath it, on a bench of salmon velvet."
— 1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 155: