bêche-de-mer
Americannoun
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another name for trepang
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See Beach-la-Mar
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of bêche-de-mer
1805–15; erroneously for French biche de mer < Portuguese bicho do mar literally, animal of the sea; cf. Beach-la-Mar
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with: “Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!”—which is the bêche-de-mer for “row hard.”
From Jerry of the Islands by Jack London
This little dwelling, too, was uninhabited, though I found a number of trays of fish lying about, which afterwards I found to be bêche-de-mer being dried and smoked.
From The Adventures of Louis De Rougemont by Louis de Rougemont
The progress of all species of bêche-de-mer is sedate and cautious, and this, probably the longest and the weakest and limpest of all, surpasses the race in deliberateness.
From My Tropic Isle by E. J. (Edmund James) Banfield
It may, by chance, be temporarily uninhabited, but fishermen from China come to all these places to collect tortoise-shell and bêche-de-mer.
From The Wings of the Morning by Louis Tracy
One sea product, the bêche-de-mer, a marine animal commonly called "sea-cucumber," is highly prized by the Chinese, who use large quantities; most of it is gathered by the Fijians.
From Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania by Jewett Castello Gilson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
