shark

Signification

Noun

1. A scaleless, predatory fish of the superorder Selachimorpha, with a cartilaginous skeleton and 5 to 7 gill slits on each side of its head.
2. The noctuid moth Cucullia umbratica.
3. A university student who is not a fresher that has engaged in sexual activity with a fresher; usually habitually and with multiple people.

Verb

1. To fish for sharks.
2. Of a university student who is not a fresher, to engage in sexual activity with a fresher, or to be at a bar or club with the general intention of engaging in such activity.

Verb

1. (obsolete) To steal or obtain through fraud.
2. (obsolete) To play the petty thief; to practice fraud or trickery; to swindle.
3. (obsolete) To live by shifts and stratagems.

Verb

To pick or gather indiscriminately or covertly.

Prononcé comme (IPA)

/ʃɑːk/

Étymologie

From Middle English shark (used by Thomas Beckington in 1442 to refer to a kind of fish), of uncertain origin. Most likely from a semantic extension of the German-derived shark (“scoundrel”), see below. The fish was originally called a dogfish or haye in English and Middle English.
alternative theories
Some older dictionaries derived the word from Latin c(h)archarias, c(h)acharus (from Ancient Greek), but admit that "the requisite [Old French] forms intermediate between E. shark and L. carcharus are not found, and it is not certain that the name [shark] was orig. applied to the fish; it may have been first used of a greedy man".
Other older authorities speculated that the word might derive from Yucatec Maya xok (“fish”) (/ʃok/), as John Hawkins brought a specimen from the area where Mayan was spoken to England in the 1560s. However, the 1442 use rules out a New World origin for the word.