Shark

How to spell shark

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shark

What does shark mean?

1. nounA large predatory sea fish with a cartilaginous skeleton and several rows of sharp teeth.
2. nounA person who exploits or cheats others, especially for money.

Shark in a sentence

• The diver photographed a shark gliding past the reef.

• The loan shark charged desperate borrowers ruinous rates of interest.

• Warning signs closed the beach after a shark was spotted offshore.

• He turned out to be a card shark who fleeced tourists in the back room.

Where does shark come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

The origin of shark is genuinely murky, which is unusual for such a common English word. It appears suddenly in the records of the 1560s, around the time Sir John Hawkins's sailors are said to have brought back a specimen and displayed it in London, where it was exhibited under this name. One popular theory traces it to the Yucatec Maya word xok, meaning a large fish, possibly carried into English by returning sea voyagers. Another theory connects it to the German word Schurke, meaning a scoundrel or villain, which would tie neatly to the later figurative sense of a ruthless, predatory person. Because no single line of descent can be proven, scholars treat the word's source as uncertain, and the human sense of a cheat or swindler is recorded almost as early as the fish sense.

How the word is built

• shark (single root, no prefix or suffix)