cuttlefish

Etymology

It is formed from English cuttle + fish.^[2][3][4][5] Cuttle is from Old English cudele,^{[6][7][8][9][10]} through Middle English codel, also cotil and cutil.^[11][5] The Old English word has a Rhine Franconian counterpart kudele,^[12] and is related to Norwegian dialect kaule.^[10][13] The OED calls its derivation unknown,^[7] but most dictionaries connect it with codd (“bag, husk”), the source of cod in codpiece and peascod.^{[14][9][10][4][3][15]} Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English refer the bag to the animal's ink sac,^[9][3] while Ayto thinks of its shape once the internal shell is removed.^[14] Further comparisons are Middle Low German küdel (“container, pocket”),^[6][8] Old High German kiot (“bag, pocket”),^[6][4] Middle High German kutel (“tripe”)^[4] and Old Norse koddi (“cushion, testicle”).^[6][8] Barnhart traces this group to Proto-Indo-European *geu-t-.^[6] The change from -d- to -t-, which appears in the 15th century, is unexplained according to Hoad;^[9] Partridge blames the influence of cut.^[15] Barnhart leaves open whether the first element of the compound was the English word or was borrowed from German Kutteln (“entrails”),^[6] and the OED suggests the opposite direction for kuttel-fisch, perhaps from English.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The compound is first recorded in 1591, in R. Perceval's Bibliotheca Hispanica,^[7][6] and Etymonline, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the Shorter Oxford likewise date it to the late 16th century.^[8][3][2] Merriam-Webster's "circa 1828" is far later.^[4][16] The animal itself had been named since Old English: cudele glosses Latin sepia in Ælfric's glossary,^[17][7] about the year 1000.^[6]

Semantic evolution

The sense has stayed the same throughout, and the compound simply lengthened an older name, which it replaced as the usual term.^[7][18] In Middle English the word also meant the animal's chalky shell, ground up as an abrasive and an antacid.^[11] What struck early writers was its ink: T. Cranmer in 1551 used cuttle allusively for the habit of clouding the water when alarmed,^[7] and Johnson (1755) described a fish that throws out a black liquid to escape, quoting Ray on the man who hides himself in his own ink like the cuttlefish.^[19] A variant scuttlefish arose in the 16th century according to Ayto, perhaps partly because of the animal's swift movements;^[14] Etymonline places it in the 17th.^[8] The original form with -d- survived in dialect as cuddle and coodle.^[7] Loosely, the name can cover squid and octopuses as well.^[2][4]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – cudele, the cuttlefish.^[6][7]
• before 1425 – codel and cutil, the animal, and also its shell.^[11][6]
• 1551 – cuttle, in allusion to the animal's darkening of the water (until 1555).^[7]
• 1591 – the compound cuttlefish.^[7][6]
• 16th century – the variant scuttlefish.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A marine cephalopod mollusk of the family Sepiidae, with eight arms and two long tentacles, a broad body and a calcified internal shell, which ejects a dark fluid when alarmed.^{[5][4][2][13]}
2. Loosely, any of various other cephalopods, such as a squid or an octopus.^[4][2]

Word family

• cuttlebone

Related words

• cuttle
• fish
• cod
• codpiece
• peascod

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
11. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
12. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter
13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
15. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
16. ^ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
17. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
18. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
19. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.