salmon

Etymology

From Middle English samoun, samon, saumon, from Anglo-Norman saumon, from Old French saumon, from Latin salmō, salmōn-. Displaced native Middle English lax, from Old English leax. The unpronounced l was later inserted to make the word appear closer to its Latin root (compare words like debt, indict, receipt, island for the same spelling Latinizations). The verb sense “ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street” alludes to salmon swimming upstream against the flow of a river to spawn.

noun

1. One of several species of fish, typically of the Salmoninae subfamily, brownish above with silvery sides and delicate pinkish-orange flesh; they ascend rivers to spawn.
   grilled salmon
   salmon paté
   salmon steak
2. A meal or dish made from this fish.
3. (plural salmons) A pale pinkish-orange colour, the colour of cooked salmon.
   salmon:
4. The upper bricks in a kiln which receive the least heat.
5. (Cockney rhyming slang) snout (tobacco; from salmon and trout)
   Got any salmon? 1992, The Shamen (band), Ebeneezer Goode (song)

adj

1. Having a pale pinkish-orange colour.
   Smiley and Guillam perched disconsolately beneath it, on a bench of salmon velvet. 1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 155

verb

1. (slang, intransitive) To ride a bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street.
   2014: "Salmon, Don't Shoal: Learning The Lingo Of Safe Cycling" by Marc Silver, NPR Some cities discourage salmoning with clever signage, like this in London: "If you can read this you are biking the wrong way."