capelin

Borrowed from Middle French capelan, from Provençal and Old Occitan capelan, from Late Latin cappellānus (“chaplain”). Doublet of chaplain.

capelin (plural capelins or capelin)

2. A fish of species Mallotus villosus, a type of smelt found in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

   Alternative form: caplin

   • 1983, Bodil Kaalund, translated by Kenneth Tindall, The Art of Greenland: Sculpture, Crafts, Painting, page 161:

     The birds are spread - so that we can see what they are like; and the men catching capelins are elevated up out of the umiak, where they practically float on the gunwale, so that we can perceive that they are the main figures and see their work-movements (fig. 250).

   • 1996, (US) National Academy of Sciences, The Bering Sea Ecosystem‎^[1], page 107:

     Capelin are widely distributed in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Sea Okhotsk, and along the Kamchatka Peninsula.

   • 2009, Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir, Who Gets What?‎^[2], page 20:

     Capelin is a relatively small, pelagic species found in the North-East Atlantic, the Barents Sea, Southwest of Greenland, off the coast of Labrador, and around Newfoundland.

   • 2025 December 29, Lindsay Jones, “A Newfoundland winter brings new risks to Coast Guard's biggest-ever operation. Crews at mercy of the elements as they work to clean up grounded ship”, in The Globe and Mail, page A1:

     On a damp and blustery morning, three-metre swells crash into the cracked hull of the MSC Baltic III, which was grounded on a pinnacle of rock on the west coast of Newfoundland earlier this year. The wind carries whiffs of rotten egg. Salvage crews in hard hats and neon yellow jackets inch along in a temporary cable car suspended high over the churning Atlantic. In a province with a long and dangerous maritime history, the Baltic's grounding in the roiling shallows of Cedar Cove last February is a story Newfoundlanders retell with incredulity. The cargo ship, en route to Corner Brook from Montreal, lost power in the early morning of Feb. 15 during a ferocious blizzard. The ship, packed with hundreds of containers of lumber, textiles, plastic beads, legumes and car parts, plus 1,600 metric tonnes of fuel, careered into the only safe harbour along a coast of towering cliffs. All 20 crew members were airlifted off the ship in a harrowing rescue by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Over the following months, salvage crews offloaded most of the 470 containers and siphoned out the fuel, which had hardened into an asphalt-like substance, in a multistage operation that involved heating it for days. At risk were local wildlife — migratory birds and the capelin and lobster that local fish harvesters rely on for their livelihoods. The goal of the work is to ready the ship for eventual dismantling and removal from the shoreline.

• Calpine, capline, in place, panicle, pelican, pinacle