sea donkey

plural sea donkeys

1. The common name for various fish, especially the hake or the spadefish.

   The sea-donkey is allowed, but not the sea-ox; and you remember this by the following mark: the unclean (on earth?) is clean, while the clean is unclean.

   2023, Talmud

   3 more examples

   The ectoparasitic isopod, Nerocila armata Dana, so common on the head of small Sea Donkey (Chaetodipterus faber) was also sometimes attached to Sea Trout fins or head.

   1958, Review of the Fisheries of British Guiana, page 10

   Some of the fish commonly caught in the trawl off British Guiana were croaker, bangamary, sea trout, sea patwa, annafolk, sea donkey, pomfret, moonfish, mackerel, barracuda and blue fish

   1960, World Fishing - Volume 9, page 27

   Other reports suggest a taste for marvels, at least in his audience: the peculiar anatomy of the “sea-donkey” or hake, which has its heart “in the middle of its gut” […]

   2018, William Fortenbaugh, Eudemus of Rhodes, page 211

2. Someone or something that lives or works at sea and is similar in some way to a donkey, especially by performing humble tasks.

   The dolphin is struggling, trudging as if it were a burro trying to go up a rocky incline—a sea donkey.

   2010, T. M. Shine, Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You, page 57

   3 more examples

   There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier.

   1895, William Clark Russell, The Honour of the Flag, page 88

   Looking at me you would think that I am just an old 'sea donkey'; you would never have thought that I have shaken hands with the very Emperor of Great Britain!

   1947, K. H. C. Lo, Forgotten Wave, page 96

   ON316446 arrived at Somes in 1948 to her proud new launchmaster Ken Weir, his wife bestowing the island's original name Matiu on the vessel. Matiu had 44 years to go as sea donkey for the quarantine station and its islanders.

   2001, David McGill, Island of Secrets: Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, page 131

3. A term of opprobrium.

   You've more brass than a highwayman, you fat-headed sea-donkey!

   1876, Theresa West, All for an Ideal: a Girl's Dream of a Past Period, page 139

   3 more examples

   You fat-headed son of a sea donkey! You portentous prig! You are a nice trainer for hopeful ingenuous youth!

   1884, Theresa Cornwallis J. West, The doom of Doolandour - Volume 3, page 67

   I mean, there she was on the radio this morning – you heard her – finally admitting what a bet-down, gin-soaked, sea-donkey of a mother she was to me growing up.

   2013, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, Downturn Abbey

   You with a cat's eye and baboon's hair, you white-assed sea donkey from across seven rivers!

   2015, James De Lorenzi, Guardians of the Tradition, page 88