Other forms: anchovies
An anchovy is a tiny strong-tasting fish packed in salt. A tin of anchovies, anchovy paste, melt the anchovy in.
Melted into a sauce it disappears entirely and leaves savouriness rather than fish, which is why it is in Worcestershire sauce and in a great many dishes nobody thinks of as fishy. The salt is a preserving method thousands of years old.
1nounanchovyA tiny strong-tasting fish packed in salt.
“The pizza was topped with anchovies, olives and capers.”
anchovy is a fish.
Spanish anchoa comes through Italian dialect, of uncertain further origin.
Basque
antxu
Ancient Greek
ἀφύη
Latin
aphyē
co
anchjuva
lij
anciôa
Spanish
anchoa
English, today
anchovy
Built from
From Spanish anchoa, from Genoese lij anciôa or related co anchjuva, anciua. The term's ultimate origin is unclear; some suggest it may have derived from an unattested Vulgar Latin - term apiuva, from Latin aphyē, apua, from Ancient Greek ἀφύη (which may be formed like Sanskrit अभ्व (“monster”)); others suggest it comes from Basque antxu, anchu (“dried fish”), from anchuva (“dry”), if that Basque term is not itself derived from Latin via some intermediary. None of these hypotheses is satisfactory because of the phonetic irregularities.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA