fingerling

fingerling — noun

1. a baby fish in the early stage after hatching, roughly finger-sized and usually

1.nounC1
Definition

a baby fish in the early stage after hatching, roughly finger-sized and usually under one year old, often raised at a hatchery before being released into rivers, lakes, or farm ponds.

Example

The hatchery releases thousands of salmon fingerlings into the river each spring.

collocation: release fingerlings into [body of water]

Élise studied how water temperature affects the survival rate of trout fingerlings.

collocation: [fish type] fingerlings (salmon / trout / carp)

Common collocations
  • salmon / trout / carp / bass fingerlings
  • release fingerlings
  • stock with fingerlings
  • rear fingerlings
Synonyms
  • fry

    even younger stage — just after the yolk sac is absorbed, smaller than a fingerling

  • juvenile fish

    broader technical term covering fingerling and slightly older fish

  • smolt

    specifically a young salmon ready to migrate to the sea

Antonyms

Grammar Patterns

a/the fingerling

fingerlings (plural)

Usage Note

Subject is usually a hatchery, fish farm, biologist, or angler — almost never a casual speaker outside aquaculture, fisheries science, or fishing communities.

Common Mistakes

I caught a fingerling salmon for dinner.
I caught a young salmon for dinner.
fingerlings are too small to keep; most jurisdictions require releasing them.

2. a slim, knobbly potato shaped roughly like a finger, usually about 5 to 13 centi

2.nounC1
Definition

a slim, knobbly potato shaped roughly like a finger, usually about 5 to 13 centimetres long, prized in cooking for its waxy flesh and nutty flavour when roasted or boiled whole.

Example

Karim roasted the fingerlings with olive oil, rosemary, and a pinch of sea salt.

typical preparation: roast fingerlings with herbs

The farmers' market had purple, yellow, and red fingerling potatoes on display.

collocation: fingerling potatoes (noun + noun)

Common collocations
  • fingerling potatoes
  • roast / boil / steam fingerlings
  • purple / yellow / red fingerlings
Synonyms

Grammar Patterns

fingerling potatoes (modifier + noun)

the fingerlings

Usage Note

Frequently appears as the modifier in 'fingerling potatoes' rather than alone. Distinguish from sense 1 (the fish): cooking context, mention of varieties, colours, or preparation methods all point to the potato reading.

Common Mistakes

A fingerling is any small potato.
A fingerling is a specific narrow, finger-shaped variety of potato.
round baby potatoes are 'new potatoes', not fingerlings.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

These four terms all name young fish, but each picks out a different life stage in aquaculture and fisheries science. 'Fry' is the earliest — newly hatched fish that have just absorbed their yolk sac and started feeding on their own, often only a few millimetres long. A 'fingerling' is the next stage: roughly finger-sized, usually under one year old, and old enough to be stocked into a pond or river. 'Smolt' is narrower — specifically a young salmon or sea trout that has developed the silver scales needed for life in salt water and is ready to migrate downstream. 'Juvenile fish' is the umbrella scientific term covering fry, fingerling, and smolt stages until the fish reaches sexual maturity. So a hatchery worker might say the salmon went from fry to fingerling to smolt to adult.

fingerling ↗fry ↗smoltjuvenile fish

Common collocations

Nouns

  • salmon fingerlings
  • trout fingerlings
  • carp fingerlings
  • bass fingerlings
  • fingerling potatoes

Phrases

  • release fingerlings into the wild
  • stock a pond with fingerlings
  • roast fingerlings whole

Prepositions

  • of (fingerlings of trout / salmon)
  • into (release into the river)

Etymology

Old EnglishEnglish

Recorded from the early 1600s, formed in English from 'finger' plus the diminutive suffix '-ling' (the same '-ling' seen in 'duckling' or 'gosling'), giving the literal sense 'little finger-sized thing'. It first referred to a young fish about the length of a human finger; the potato sense developed much later, in twentieth-century American English, as growers began naming heirloom varieties for the same finger-like shape.