Other forms: eels
An eel is a long snake-like fish. A slippery eel, smoked eel, eels in the river.
European ones breed in the Sargasso Sea, thousands of miles away, and the young drift back on the currents for years — nobody has ever seen them spawn. Numbers have collapsed and the species is critically endangered. Slippery as an eel is the standard comparison.
1nouneelA long snake-like fish.
“The eel slipped out of his hands and wriggled back into the river.”
eel is a fish.
Old English ael names the fish, from a Germanic root of unknown further origin.
Proto-Germanic
*ēlaz — eel
Proto-West Germanic
*āl — eel
Old English
ǣl — eel
Middle English
el — eel
English, today
eel
From Middle English el (“eel”), from Old English ǣl (“eel”), from Proto-West Germanic āl (“eel”), from Proto-Germanic ēlaz (“eel”), which is of unknown origin. 2 Cognate with West Frisian iel (“eel”), Dutch aal (“eel”), German Low German Aal, Ool (“eel”), German Aal (“eel”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish ål (“eel”), Faroese állur, álur (“eel”), Icelandic áll (“eel”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA