Sturgeon

How to spell sturgeon

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sturgeon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sturgeon mean?

1. nounA large, long-bodied fish with bony plates along its body, valued for its flesh and for the roe used to make caviar.

Sturgeon in a sentence

• The fishmonger displayed a whole sturgeon on a bed of ice.

• Caviar comes from the roe of the sturgeon.

Where does sturgeon come from?

Language of origin: French

Sturgeon entered English in the 1200s through Anglo-Norman and Old French estourgeon, the name of the large freshwater and coastal fish prized for its flesh and roe. The French word was itself borrowed from a Germanic source, a Frankish form reconstructed as sturjo, which is also the ancestor of the Old High German sturo and the modern German Stor. The original Germanic root is thought to relate to the idea of stirring up or rooting in the mud of riverbeds, which is exactly how the fish feeds. Because the word travelled into English through French, the spelling kept its soft French -geon ending rather than a harder Germanic form, and that -geon is the part writers most often get wrong. The roe of this same fish gives us caviar, which is why the sturgeon has been a high-status catch for centuries.

How the word is built

• sturgeon (single root noun; from Old French estourgeon, no separable affixes)