halibut

UK/ˈhæ.lɪ.bət/US/ˈhæ.lɪ.bət/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,526 of 15,258leans spoken

A halibut is a very large flat white fish. Grill the halibut, a halibut steak, a two-metre halibut.

It is the largest of the flatfish and can weigh over two hundred kilograms, so it is sold in steaks rather than whole fillets. Like all flatfish it starts life upright with an eye on each side, and one eye migrates as it settles onto its side.

Definitions of halibut

1nounhalibutA very large flat white fish.B2+
“We had grilled halibut with lemon and new potatoes.”

halibut is a fish.

Where it comes from

Middle English halibut is holy plus butt, a flatfish, because it was eaten on holy days.

Middle English
halibut
English, today
halibut

From Middle English halibut, equivalent to holy + butt, since the fish was often eaten on holy days. Cognate with Dutch heilbot, German Heiligbutt,Heilbutt,Heilbutte, Danish helleflynder, Swedish helgeflundra and Norwegian Nynorsk hellefisk.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Insects & Sea Life

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halibut in the wild

In some regions, and less commonly, other species of large flatfish are also referred to as halibut.
Halibut
USS Halibut, a Gato-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the halibut, a large species of flatfish.
USS Halibut (SS-232)
Most flatfish are generally either right-eyed or left-eyed dominant, but the California halibut is unusual in having a roughly even number of each type.
California halibut
Like other flatfish, the halibut hides under sand or loose gravel, camouflaging into the sea floor.
California halibut
The Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus) is a flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae.
Atlantic halibut

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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