Word of the Day

: November 3, 2013

kipper

noun KIP-er

What It Means

1 : a male salmon or sea trout during or after the spawning season

2 : a herring or salmon cured by salting and smoking

kipper in Context

While vacationing in London, Kim enjoyed a fine breakfast of kippers and eggs.

"It's a simple dish: smoked kipper from New York broiled with fans of red onion; buttery, large-curd scrambled eggs; and a square of golden hash browns topped with creamy caramelized onions." - From a restaurant review by Nicholas Boer in The San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 2013

Did You Know?

Did you know? An American visiting Scotland once reported to The New York Times that "a kipper is prepared by taking a herring fresh (no more than 24 hours out of the water), plump, oily (15 percent or more fat content is best), soaking it in a saltwater brine and smoking it slowly over a fire composed of oak chips." This process of creating a kipper (called "kippering") goes back to at least the 18th century, but the word "kipper" dates all the way back to before the 12th century, when it was spelled "cypera" and was used specifically to mean "a spawning salmon." "Cypera" is related to the Old English word for copper ("coper") and may have been suggested by the salmon's color.