whitebait
Americannoun
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a young sprat or herring.
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Cooking. any small, delicate fish cooked whole without being cleaned, especially the sprat.
noun
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the young of herrings, sprats, etc, cooked and eaten whole as a delicacy
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any of various small silvery fishes, such as Galaxias attenuatus of Australia and New Zealand and Allosmerus elongatus of North American coastal regions of the Pacific
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of whitebait
First recorded in 1750–60; white + bait, so called from use as bait
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.
Half a stone overweight, Donald had been fishing whitebait on the Waikato river external-link when Henry rang him and asked him to join the squad before the semi-finals.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2023
They ate whitebait patties and steaks at the Whataroa hotel, slept in simple cabins and rented houses and mixed and mingled with the local farming community.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 12, 2016
Mr. Psilakis remembers pulling up to a beach and using nets to catch whitebait in the shallows.
From New York Times ● Dec. 22, 2015
A few minutes later, it is brought in: kilograms of silver cyprinid - the size of whitebait - glisten in the morning sun.
From BBC ● Feb. 17, 2014
But, alas! he returned likewise without even so much as a whitebait.
From Bill the Minder by Robinson, W. Heath (William Heath)
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.
