tautog

American  

[taw-tog, -tawg, tou-tog] / tɔˈtɒg, -ˈtɔg, ˈtaʊ tɒg /

noun

1. a dark-colored wrasse, Tautoga onitis, a popular game and food fish inhabiting waters along the North Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to South Carolina.

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tautog British  

/ tɔːˈtɒɡ /

noun

1. Also called: blackfish.  a large dark-coloured wrasse, Tautoga onitis, of the North American coast of the Atlantic Ocean: used as a food fish

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Etymology

Origin of tautog

An Americanism first recorded in 1635–45; from Narragansett ( English spelling) tautaũog, plural of taut

Example Sentences

He predicted that removing the old traps will help the populations of various fish species including tautog, rock crabs, whelk, cunner and sea bass, as well as the remaining lobsters.

From Seattle Times • Mar. 22, 2022

Whatever this tautog had been up to, it was bound now for ice.

From New York Times • May 28, 2012

It was almost time to head home, to the planks and the knives, with a tautog that did not behave like a tautog and a few striped bass.

From New York Times • May 28, 2012

This is when they gorge on really big baits like bunker, or I find them around areas loaded with tautog and fluke.

From Time Magazine Archive

Turtle, salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat.

From House of the Seven Gables by Hawthorne, Nathaniel