🐟 A smoked herring 🧟 A swollen monster

bloater

9.9

A large herring that is lightly salted and smoked without being opened and cleaned

noun
/ˈbləʊtə/

Archaic

: bloaters

For breakfast, we had toasted bread topped with bloaters and butter.

Examples

- Egg and cress or bloater paste?

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)
Go on up and get the bloaters cooked.

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
- I brought you some nice bloaters...

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
How about "the greasy brown toad bloater special"?

How to Eat Fried Worms (2006)
At the seafood restaurant, the special included a dish of bloaters served with lemon.
The chef recommended making a spread using the bloaters and cream cheese on crackers.

Synonyms

herring

vsbloater

52 1.4

A small silver fish often eaten smoked, salted, or pickled

is a specific preserved preparation rather than the general fish species

smoked herring

vsbloater

1 3.3

A herring that has been dried and smoked, giving it a red color and strong salty taste

is only briefly smoked and not dried, giving a paler color

kippered herring

vsbloater

6.8

A fish split open, salted, and smoked, often served for breakfast

is left whole and not gutted, not split open

Compounds

blue bloater

Offensive

9.9

A person with long-term lung disease who is overweight and has blue skin from not enough oxygen

Surface Forms

bloater singular

bloaters plural

Morphology

bloater = bloat (opaque) = bloat + er

Though formally bloat + -er, the sense 'a type of lightly smoked herring' is a specialized culinary extension not predictable from 'bloat'.

Etymology

Bloater for the smoked herring comes from the verb bloat, which means 'to swell', because the fish swell and look puffed when they are lightly salted and smoked whole. So a bloater is a herring made that way.