# parr

Pronunciation: US say "PAHR" /pɑɹ/; UK say "PAH" /pɑː(ɹ)/

## Noun

1. A young salmon at the stage between fry and smolt, when it feeds mainly on invertebrates and cannot tolerate salt water.
   - Simple: A young salmon, past the baby stage, that eats mostly small animals without backbones and cannot live in salt water.
   - _A parr holds its spot in the current, darting out to snap up passing insect larvae._
   - _Biologists counted parr along each stretch of the river to judge how well the spawning season had gone._

## Origin

For the salmon life stage, the word comes from Middle English parren ("to enclose"), referring to the spots along the fish's side, which resemble the bars of a fence. Compare Scottish Gaelic bradan ("salmon").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/parr (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).