swordfish

From Middle English swerdfysche, from Old English *sweordfisċ. Equivalent to sword +‎ fish.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɔː(ɹ)dfɪʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

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swordfish (countable and uncountable, plural swordfish or swordfishes)

1. A large marine fish with a long, pointed bill, Xiphias gladius.

   Synonym: (obsolete) sea emperor

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     Then there came a reg'lar terror of a sou'wester same as you don't get one summer in a thousand, and blowed the shanty flat and ripped about half of the weir poles out of the sand. We spent consider'ble money getting 'em reset, and then a swordfish got into the pound and tore the nets all to slathers, right in the middle of the squiteague season.

   • 2008 January 30, Nick Fox, “Taking Worry Off the Plate”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 5 May 2021:

     One reason, the department suggested, was that affluent New Yorkers were likely to eat expensive fish high in mercury, like swordfish and tuna.

2. A sudoku technique involving possible cell locations for a digit, or pair, or triple, in uniquely three rows and three columns only. This allows for the elimination of candidates around the grid.

swordfish (third-person singular simple present swordfishes, present participle swordfishing, simple past and past participle swordfished)

1. To fish for swordfish.