snoek

S1N1O1E1K5

noun

An edible fish, Thyrsites atun, native to South African (Cape), South American and Australian waters, often smoked or salted.

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Meanings

noun

alternative snook

  1. South AfricaAn edible fish, Thyrsites atun, native to South African (Cape), South American and Australian waters, often smoked or salted.

    Snoek need not be scaled. The scales are very fine and usually slip off during handling.

    2005, Alicia Wilkinson, Complete South African Fish & Seafood Cookbook, page 58
    2 more examples

    2003, Oceanographic Literature Review, Volume 50, Issues 1-2600, page 348, Snoek (Thyrsites atun) is a valuable commercial species and an important predator of small pelagic fishes in the Benguela ecosystem. The South African population attains 50% sexual maturity at a fork length of ca.73.0 cm (3 years). Spawning occurs offshore during winter-spring, along the shelf break (150-400 m) of the western Agulhas Bank and the South African west coast

    My friend Jeffrey Jowell, who grew up in Cape Town, has lived away from South Africa for more than forty years, yearning for snoek the entire time. He thinks about fried snoek and grilled snoek and dried snoek and snoek made into pâté. He may miss smoked snoek most of all. Any mention of snoek—a long, bony fish that looks like a second cousin of a barracuda—triggers memories in Jeffrey of his childhood.

    2004, Calvin Trillin, The strange attraction of snoek: The New Yorker, volume 80, page lxxxvi
  2. South AfricaNatalThe queen mackerel, Scomberomorus lineolatus.
  3. South AfricaAny of several species of barracuda.

Synonyms & antonyms

Similar

nouna large marine food fish common on the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa

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Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Old Dutch*snuoc
  2. Middle Dutchsnoec
  3. Dutchsnoek
  4. Afrikaanssnoek
  5. Englishsnoek

Borrowed from Afrikaans snoek, from Dutch snoek, from Middle Dutch snoec, from Old Dutch *snuoc. Some senses come from or are influenced by Dutch zeesnoek (“barracuda”, literally “sea pike”), a word that Van Riebeeck applied to the Thyrsites atun. Doublet of snook and possibly a distant doublet of snake.

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Rhymes & wordplay

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Cite this entry
APA

snoek. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snoek

MLA

“snoek.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snoek. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “snoek,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/snoek.

Source: snoek on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.