gilt-head

English

Alternative forms

• gilthead

Noun

gilt-head (plural gilt-heads)

1. The gilt-head bream.
   • 1813, Oliver Goldsmith, A history of the earth: and animated nature - Volume 6, page 258:

     To give another instance: upon examining the fins of a fish to me unknown, I find them prickly; I then look for the situation of the ventral fins, I find them entirely wanting; this then must be a prickly-finned apodal fish. Of this kind there are but three; and, by comparing the fish with the description, I find it either of the trichurus kind, the sword-fish, or the gilt-head.

   • 1838, Charles F. Partington, The British Cyclopaedia of the Arts, Sciences, History, Geography, Literature, Natural History, and Biography, page 701:

     The common gilt-head (C. aurata) is the one best known. It is exceedingly abundant in the Mediterranean, and not rare on the west coast of Spain, Portugal, and France.

   • 1955, Pierre de Latil, The Underwater Naturalist, page 169:

     An underwater hunter spots gilt-heads under twenty, twenty-five or even thirty feet of water.

Anagrams

• alighted