EEL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does eel mean? 

• EEL (noun)
  The noun EEL has 2 senses:

1. the fatty flesh of eel; an elongate fish found in fresh water in Europe and America; large eels are usually smoked or pickled

2. voracious snakelike marine or freshwater fishes with smooth slimy usually scaleless skin and having a continuous vertical fin but no ventral fins

  Familiarity information: EEL used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EEL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The fatty flesh of eel; an elongate fish found in fresh water in Europe and America; large eels are usually smoked or pickled

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("eel" is a kind of...):

fish (the flesh of fish used as food)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "eel"):

smoked eel (eel cured by smoking)

elver (young eel; may be sauteed or batter-fried)

Holonyms ("eel" is a part of...):

common eel; freshwater eel (eels that live in fresh water as adults but return to sea to spawn; found in Europe and America; marketed both fresh and smoked)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Voracious snakelike marine or freshwater fishes with smooth slimy usually scaleless skin and having a continuous vertical fin but no ventral fins

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("eel" is a kind of...):

malacopterygian; soft-finned fish (any fish of the superorder Malacopterygii)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "eel"):

elver (young eel)

common eel; freshwater eel (eels that live in fresh water as adults but return to sea to spawn; found in Europe and America; marketed both fresh and smoked)

Anguilla sucklandii; tuna (New Zealand eel)

moray; moray eel (family of brightly colored voracious eels of warm coastal waters; generally nonaggressive to humans but larger species are dangerous if provoked)

conger; conger eel (large dark-colored scaleless marine eel found in temperate and tropical coastal waters; some used for food)

Holonyms ("eel" is a member of...):

Anguilliformes; order Anguilliformes; order Apodes (elongate fishes with pelvic fins and girdle absent or reduced)

 Context examples 

He stopped Alleyne to ask him whether it was not true that there was a hostel somewhere in those parts which was especially famous for the stewing of eels.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Tiny young eels accomplish incredible tasks to migrate."

(Study uncovers magnetic memory of European glass eels, National Science Foundation)

This is you, who have been as slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“I'm Ben Gunn, I am,” replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his embarrassment.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Because I followed it and saw it vanish into a wall, as easily as an eel into sand.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If you're an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mugridge went down on the fore-hatch under three men; but he emerged from the mass like an eel, bleeding at the mouth, the offending shirt ripped into tatters, and sprang for the main-rigging.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Eel populations have declined precipitously since 1980.

(Study uncovers magnetic memory of European glass eels, National Science Foundation)

The clerk having made answer that he had heard the eels of Sowley well spoken of, the friar sucked in his lips and hurried forward.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I am sure, said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a Conger-eel, that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)