bream

Pluralbream, breams

Formsbreams, breaming, breamed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A European freshwater fish of the genus Abramis, in the carp family, with several species and little valued as food.

   A bream feeds along the riverbed, sucking up worms and insect larvae.

   Large shoals of bream drift through the deep, slow stretches of lowland rivers.

   Note

   The fish's name came into English as Middle English breme, from Old French bresme, which survives in modern French as brème. Behind the French lies a Frankish *brahsma, whose Germanic relatives live on as Dutch brasem and German Brasse. Cyprinoid places the fish in the carp family. Every fish called bream in English, however distant from this one, carries the same inherited name.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A saltwater fish of the genus Pagellus and related groups, found in coastal seas and widely caught for food.

   A bream patrols the rocky reef, feeding on crustaceans and small shellfish.

   The market stalls were piled with bream landed that morning.

3. 3
   nounBritishcountable

   The common European freshwater bream, Abramis brama, a single deep-bodied species within the genus Abramis.

   She landed a record bream from the slow-moving stretch below the weir.

   Match anglers prize bream for the steady weight a good net brings.

   Note

   In British usage, bream on its own names this single species, Abramis brama, rather than the genus as a whole. When precision matters, anglers and naturalists call it the carp bream. That name ties the fish to its family and keeps it clearly apart from the bream of the sea.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A North American freshwater fish of the genus Lepomis and related groups, also called sunfish or pondfish.

   He baited a cricket on the hook and pulled in a bream.

   Farm ponds across the state teem with bream through the summer.

   Similarsunfish, pondfish

   Note

   Here the European name has been carried over to a different genus, Lepomis, whose fish also answer to sunfish and pondfish. One word now covers the carp-family fish of Europe, these American fish, and marine fish as well. When the kind of fish matters, sunfish or the species name is the clearer choice.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To clean a ship's bottom by applying fire to burn off clinging shells and seaweed, then scraping it away.

   Sailors would bream the hull every few months to keep the ship fast.

   They beached the vessel to bream her before crossing the ocean.

   Note

   A shipkeeping verb with no tie to the fish. It comes from a separate root, comparable to broom and to German brennen, "to burn," as in ein Schiff brennen, literally "to burn a ship." The fire is the point: growth is scorched loose before it is scraped away. The object is the hull or the vessel itself, which sailors' idiom calls she, as in "to bream her."

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