Plaice is a flat sea fish with orange spots. Fried plaice, a fillet of plaice, plaice and chips.
It starts life swimming upright like any fish, and one eye migrates across the head as it flattens, which takes a few weeks. The orange spots are the surest way to tell it from the other flatfish on a slab.
1nounplaiceA flat sea fish with orange spots.
“We had plaice and chips at the seaside café.”
plaice is a fish.
Latin platessa names the flatfish, from Greek platys, broad, which also gives flat.
Ancient Greek
πλατύς — broad
Latin
platessa
Old French
plaiz
Middle English
playce
English, today
plaice
Middle English playce, plays, from Old French plaiz, from Latin platessa, from Ancient Greek πλατύς (“broad”). See platy-, plat and flat.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA