Definition of "mackerel" in English

noun

1. Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,

2. A true mackerel, any fish of tribe Scombrini (Scomber spp., Rastrelliger spp.)

3. Certain other similar small fish in families Carangidae, Gempylidae, and Hexagrammidae.

4. (chiefly attributive, of clouds, the sky, etc) A regular pattern, similar to fish scales, of undulating small clouds with sky visible between them.

   • a mackerel sky

noun

1. (obsolete) A pimp; also, a bawd.

   • 1483, William Caxton, Magnus Cato, quoted in James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century, vol. 2, publ. by John Russell Smith (1847), page 536. […] nyghe his hows dwellyd a maquerel or bawde […]
   • NETTING MACKEREL: THE PIMP DETAIL
   • 2006, Paul Crowley, Message-ID: in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare https://web.archive.org/web/20201001221812/https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare/VarPp2-HSO0/QuMJdNOwfisJ A procurer or a pimp is a broker (or broker-between), a mackerel, or a pandar; the last is not necessarily-and, indeed, not usually-a professional.