Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Pickerel   Listen
noun
Pickerel  n.  (Written also pickerell)  
1.
A young or small pike. (Obs.) "Bet (better) is, quoth he, a pike than a pickerel."
2.
(Zool.)
(a)
Any one of several species of freshwater fishes of the genus Esox, esp. the smaller species.
(b)
The glasseye, or wall-eyed pike. See Wall-eye. Note: The federation, or chain, pickerel (Esox reticulatus) and the brook pickerel (Esox Americanus) are the most common American species. They are used for food, and are noted for their voracity. About the Great Lakes the pike is called pickerel.
Pickerel weed (Bot.), a blue-flowered aquatic plant (Pontederia cordata) having large arrow-shaped leaves. So called because common in slow-moving waters where pickerel are often found.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Pickerel" Quotes from Famous Books



... their manufacture was hatched and executed. Ezekiel Bailey was, in the days prior to the war of 1812, looked upon as a very likely boy. He was studious and industrious, and while other boys of the village were out in the white oak groves setting box traps for gray squirrels, and spearing pickerel by torch light in the waters of Cobosseecontee, Ezekiel was busy in his little workshop fashioning useful things to be used ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... is, it is no more so than that of many of his contemporaries. Francis Alexander, for instance, born in Connecticut in 1800, a farm boy and afterwards a school teacher, never attempted painting until he was over twenty. Then one day, having caught a pickerel, its beauty reminded him of a box of water-colors a boy had left him, and he attempted to paint the fish, with such success that he was filled with amazement and delight. He practiced a while longer, decorating the white-washed ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... your pond, stranger; if you be a good hand with the gun, you'll never want for fresh meat while that water holds together. The finest maskelonge and pickerel I ever see was hooked out ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Connecticut—that it was quite some handier, and that it was real thoughtful of him; and that she didn't want to speak no ill of the dead, but if her first man had been that considerate he wouldn't never have got himself drowned going pickerel fishing in March, when the ice was so soft you'd suppose rational folks ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight Through the day and through the night Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches too; All the world I saw or knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... weary tramping again resumed. Fortunately the water was so low that advantage could be taken of the closely overgrown shore by walking on the lake bed, and far better progress was made owing to the firmer footing. Three days were used in getting down the lake, during which time but one fish, a pickerel, was caught, where they had ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... the boy, who was called little Baptiste to distinguish him from his father. "Le bon Dieu will send an excellent breakfast, sure enough, if I get up very early, and find some good dore (pickerel) and catfish on the night-line. But if I did not bait the hooks, what then? Well, I hope there will be more to-morrow than this ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts. We glided noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel or a bream from the covert of the pads, and the smaller bittern now and then sailed away on sluggish wings from some recess in the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long grass at our ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... news! Have given up all fish diet. Have given up codfish, weak fish, sole, flounder, shark's fins, bass, trout, herring (dried, kippered, smoked, and fresh), finnan haddie, perch, pike, pickerel, lobster, halibut, and stewed eels. Gross weight now only nine hundred and thirty pounds averdupois. Sweet thoughts ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... which to spend the night. Paddling slowly up the lake, trolling for fish as they went, they soon found a spot which answered their purpose admirably. It was a bluff near the lake, wooded with Norway pines, and sloping rather abruptly towards the water. By this time they had caught half a dozen fine pickerel, and, disembarking, soon had their fire built, tents pitched and hammocks swung. The guides prepared supper of broiled fish, accompanied by such canned dainties as had been brought with them and their ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... seen, fastened to the long stake driven into its bed, or secured by the rude anchor of stone appended to a cable of twisted bark, the light canoe or clumsy periagua of the peasant fisherman, who, ever and anon, drew up from its deep bosom the shoal-loving pickerel or pike, or white or black bass, or whatever other tenant of these waters might chance to affix itself to the traitorous hook. It is true that his view of these objects was only occasional and indistinct; but his intimate ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... offered him a bookful, every variety of shape and color, at dawn and dusk, without tempting him. I tried grubs, which bass like, and a frog's leg, which no pickerel can resist, and little frogs, such as big trout hunt among the lily pads in the twilight,—all without pleasing him. And then waterbeetles, and a red squirrel's tail-tip, which makes the best hackle in the world, and kicking grasshoppers, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... canoe which the Cayugas had left to them, the little party headed to the east, now skimming close to the silent beach, now cutting a straight path across some bay from point to point, out over the depths where lay the sturgeon and the pickerel and trout and whitefish. The gulls swooped at them; then, frightened, soared away in wide, rushing circles, dropping here and there for an overbold minnow. The afternoon went by with hardly the passing of a word. Each of them, the Captain, the maid, the priest, looked ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... falls. With a bright jack-light, made of pitch-pine-knots, everything seemed strange and exciting to the boy who was making his first acquaintance of the wilderness world by night. His brother Enoch speared an eel that weighed four pounds, and a pickerel of the same weight. The party did not get home till 2 A. M., but the expedition was a glorious one and long talked over. The only sad feature in this rich experience was in his mother's worrying while ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... brook or speckled trout, for it has no speckles, and it's not a relative of the late William Basse, for it isn't deep enough in the body, nor a perch, for it's too big and has no stripes. It's either a salmon trout or a pickerel, Wilks." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... While there its light shone for a considerable distance around, and enabled the fishers to see the smallest fish low down in the clear calm water. This was really enjoyable sport, and generally resulted in a good catch of pike, pickerel, and, very often, ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... in excellent fish of various kinds, affording excellent sport to those who are fond of fishing. When the ice breaks up in the spring, immense shoals of pickerel commence running up the Moira river, at Belleville, to spawn in the interior. At that time a number of young men amuse themselves with spearing them, standing on the flat rocks at the end of the bridge which crosses the river They dart their spears into the rushing waters at ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... larger. From some parts of it Mount Marcy and the gorge of the Indian Pass are seen to excellent advantage. The Indian Pass shows as a huge cleft in the mountain, the gray walls rising on one side perpendicularly for many hundred feet. This lake abounds in white and yellow perch and in pickerel; of the latter single specimens are often caught which weigh fifteen pounds. There were a few wild ducks on both lakes. A brood of the goosander or red merganser, the young not yet able to fly, were the occasion of some spirited rowing. But with two pairs ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... "commonty" for the use of the people. A quite pretentious wharf lined the river, and from this, on any summer afternoon, a string of soldiers and idle citizens might be seen—among whom was Dobson—casting hook and troll for bass, trout, pickerel and herring, with which the river swarmed. On one occasion Brock helped to haul up a seine net in which were counted 1,008 whitefish of an average weight of two pounds, 6,000 being netted in ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... destined to avenge it, a week or two later, by eating two new-hatched ducklings of that same black duck's brood. Another of the little muskrats encountered fate on the threshold of his existence, being snatched by the hungry jaws of a large pickerel, which darted upon him like lightning from under the covert of a lily-pad. But in this case, vengeance was instant and direct. The big muskrat chanced to be near by. He caught the pickerel, while the latter was preoccupied ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... so? But linger here with me, casting for pickerel among the water-lilies until the sun sets red and big over the sea yonder, and you shall see a light upon these meadows where the grass is as fine silk, that is almost as if it were not of earth. And as we walk home through the long Northern twilight, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... of the alders and willows. Away up at the end, where the stream entered from its jungle of water-reeds and sunken stumps and brown bullrushes, there grew a tangle of water-plants all in glorious blossom. There were water-lilies both golden and waxy-white, and blue spikes of pickerel-weed, and clumps of fragrant musk. And over the surface of the golden-brown water was spread a fairy web of delicate plant life, vivid green, and woven of such tiny forms that it looked like airy ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... dine with his neighbors; and he observed that at the dinners to which he was invited there were turkeys, and ducks, and chickens, as well as partridges, and quails, and woodcocks, together with salmon, and trout, and pickerel,—with roasted beef, and lamb, and ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker



Words linked to "Pickerel" :   barred pickerel, pike, Esox americanus, pickerel frog, chain pike, Esox niger



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com