Eel

How to spell eel

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce eel

What does eel mean?

1. nounA long, snake-like fish with smooth, slippery skin, found in fresh and salt water.

Eel in a sentence

• The chef smoked the eel before serving it on toast.

• A young eel slipped through the gap in the net.

Where does eel come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from the Old English æl, the native Anglo-Saxon name for the long, snake-like fish. It belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Old High German al, the Dutch aal, and the German Aal, all naming the same slippery creature, which suggests the word reaches back to a common ancestor in early Germanic speech. Its origins before that are genuinely obscure, and scholars have never settled on a convincing root beyond the Germanic group. The spelling settled into the doubled vowel 'ee' to mark the long sound, the same pattern seen in 'feel' and 'steel'. Because it is so short and phonetically regular, the chief modern challenge is simply remembering the two e's rather than a single one.

How the word is built

• eel (single root, from Old English æl); no prefix or suffix