mackerel

Etymology 1

From Middle English mackerell, macrell, macrelle, makarell, makerel, makerell, makerelle, makrel, makrell, makyrelle, from Old French maquerel. Further origin unknown.

noun

1. Certain smaller edible fish, principally true mackerel and Spanish mackerel in family Scombridae, often speckled,
   1. typically Scomber scombrus in the British isles.
      Philander went into the next room[…]and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
      He sometimes pinches the maids till their arms are as many colours as a mackerel’s back. 1926, Hope Mirrlees, chapter 6, in Lud-in-the-Mist, London: Millennium, published 2000, page 68
      1982, Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Chapter 5, in Zami; Sister Outsider; Undersong, New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993, p. 47, “ […] if you ever so much as breathe a word about my stories, Sandman’s comin’ after you the very same minute to pluck out you eyes like a mackerel for soup.”
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.

Etymology 2

From Middle English makerel, maquerel, from Old French maquerel, from Middle Dutch makelare, makelaer (“broker”) (> makelaar (“broker, peddler”)). See also French maquereau.

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 1980, The Police Journal, Volume 53 (page 257) doi:10.1177/0032258X8005300305 (also available at Google books)
   Hundreds of ‘night birds’ and their ‘mackerels’ and other vice-pushers were sent packing. 1981, Peter Gammond, Raymond Horricks, Big Bands, page 15
   2006, Paul Crowley, Message-ID: in humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare 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.
   You can't 'work' in a legal brothel without mackerel. 2009, Jeffery Klaehn, Roadblocks to Equality, page 118
   Perhaps, but my sources think the mackerel knew of this girl but she didn't know of him. 2012, J. Robert Janes, Mayhem