porpoise

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English porpeis, also porpais and porpas,^[2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman porpeis and Old French porpois, also porpais and pourpois.^[3][2][4][5] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from about 1136–37, both for the animal and for its meat;^[6] the OED dates the French forms from the 11th century, and Etymonline from the 12th.^[3][5] The French word means literally "pig fish", from porc (“pig”) and peis (“fish”),^[5][4][7] which go back to Latin porcus (“pig”) and piscis (“fish”).^[5][8][9] The OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged take the French word from the Latin compound Medieval Latin porcopiscis, found in an 8th-century glossary and in a British source of 1265,^[3][10] and Ayto reconstructs it as Vulgar Latin;^[11] Barnhart argues the reverse, that the 1265 Latin form was probably modelled on the French.^[4] The name is said to render a "sea-pig" expression: Latin porcus marīnus, used by Pliny and perhaps of a shark,^[3][11][12] or a Germanic compound such as Old English mereswīn, Middle Dutch mereswijn, German Meerschwein or Danish marsvin, of which the French would be a loan translation.^[4][5][8] The Germanic name itself reached French marsouin, through Middle Dutch according to Etymonline, but through Scandinavian according to Barnhart.^[5][4] Etymonline traces the Latin words to Proto-Indo-European *porko- (“young pig”) and *pisk- (“a fish”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The animal, and also its flesh as food: the account rolls of Durham Abbey list 1 porpas in 1309–10,^[4][3] and the surname Walter Porpeis appears in 1299, but the OED leaves open whether such early records are Anglo-Norman or Middle English.^[3] Its first certain quotation is a recipe for porpoise in broth in the Forme of Cury, in a manuscript of before 1425.^[3][13][14]

Semantic evolution

Etymonline and Ayto put the name down to a fancied likeness between the animal's snout and a pig's,^[5][11] while the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins suggests that porpoises were thought good eating.^[13] In Middle English the word named both the animal and its meat.^[2][5] Weekley notes Captain John Smith's spelling porkpisce and Cotgrave's gloss of the French word as "a porpose, or sea-hog".^[15] From 1909, in H. G. Wells's Tono-Bungay, the verb meant to move or behave like a porpoise, then from 1939 to surface and submerge by turns;^[3] it passed to aircraft and seaplanes that touch down briefly and rise again (1914), and slang had to do a porpoise for a submarine's steep dive (1929).^[3] In English dialect a porpoise-pig was a porpoise in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and the word could mean a very fat man in Lincolnshire or a stupid or conceited person in Scots and Cornish speech.^[16]

Timeline

• 1299 – Porpeis as a surname.^[3]
• 1309–10 – porpas, in Durham Abbey's accounts; later porpeys (1381) and porpoys (1391).^[4][3]
• before 1425 – the common porpoise, in a recipe in the Forme of Cury.^[3]
• 1841 – in Canada, the beluga.^[3]
• 1909 – verb, to move like a porpoise.^[3][10]
• 1914 – verb, of an aircraft, to touch the surface and rise again.^[3]
• 1929 – to do a porpoise, of a submarine, to dive steeply.^[3]
• 1931 – noun, a bad landing in which an aircraft touches down and rises again.^[3]
• 1939 – verb, to move through water alternately surfacing and submerging.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small gregarious toothed whale of the family Phocoenidae, with a blunt rounded snout and no beak.^[17][10][3]
2. (not in technical use) Any of various related cetaceans, especially a dolphin.^[17]
3. (chiefly Canadian) The beluga.^[3]
4. (aeronautics, colloquial) A bad landing in which an aircraft, especially a seaplane, touches down and rises again.^[3]

Verb

1. To leap or plunge like a porpoise; to break the surface of the water and go under again: The seals porpoised across the harbour.^[10][3]
2. Of an aircraft or surface craft, to touch the water or ground briefly and rise again.^[10][3]

Word family

• porpoiselike
• Dall's porpoise

Related words

• pork
• porcine
• fish
• Pisces
• mereswine
• grampus
• porcupine

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
17. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins