Trout

How to spell trout

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce trout

What does trout mean?

1. nounA speckled freshwater fish of the salmon family, popular with anglers and as food.

Trout in a sentence

• He caught a large trout in the river before breakfast.

• The menu offered grilled trout with lemon and butter.

Where does trout come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Trout reaches modern English from the Old English truht, which was itself borrowed from the Late Latin tructa, a name for this freshwater fish. The Latin word is widely thought to descend from the Greek troktes, meaning 'gnawer' or 'nibbler', a creature named for the way it bites and nibbles at its food. The fish has carried the name through centuries of English angling and cookery, staying remarkably stable in form. The spelling preserves the 'ou' vowel that English often uses for the 'ow' sound, as in 'shout' and 'about'. Because the word is short and the vowel pattern is familiar, the spelling has settled comfortably and rarely shifts.

How the word is built

• trout (single root; from Late Latin tructa, no prefix or suffix)