Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
📧 An email filter 🐟 A male fish
milter

milter

9.9
A male fish, usually a salmon or trout, during breeding season
  • noun
  • Specialized
: macho
  • During the breeding run, each milter competes to fertilize the eggs.

Examples

  • Fishermen can often spot a milter by its distinctive hooked jaw.

  • During the breeding season, a milter can be quite aggressive.

  • The biologist identified the milter by its brighter colors during spawning season.

  • The milter swam upstream to spawn.

  • The biologist identified the milter by its brighter colors during spawning season.

  • During the breeding run, each milter competes to fertilize the eggs.

  • Fishermen can often spot a milter by its distinctive hooked jaw.

Synonyms

humpy
vsmilter
  • Specialized
1 9.3

A pink salmon that grows a hump when it spawns

is broader, referring to a male fish in breeding season across species without hump requirement

Surface Forms

milter singular
milters plural

Morphology

milter = milt (semi-transparent) = milt + er

The word is clearly built from 'milt' + '-er', but the resulting zoological term is specialized rather than fully predictable for learners.

Etymology

Milter comes from the word milt, meaning 'fish sperm', plus the ending -er, which means 'one who has or gives it'. So a milter is a male fish in breeding season because it produces milt to fertilize eggs.