the.com/roe
Fish eggs that became luxury the moment someone mispronounced caviar prices as confidence.
means The mass of eggs (or sometimes milt) found inside a female fish or shellfish, eaten fresh, cured, or smoked.
from Roe swam into English around the 14th century from Old English-ish Germanic roots — kin to Middle Low German 'rogen' and Dutch 'rog,' all circling an old Germanic word for fish spawn. It's unrelated to the name 'Roe,' and only a distant, unproven cousin at best to similar-sounding words in other tongues — the fish-egg sense stayed remarkably stable for centuries before marketing ever got its hands on it.
- mass noun
- roe is the whole egg mass, not individual eggs
- caviar distinction
- only sturgeon roe, salted, legally earns caviar
- color clue
- orange roe often means salmon or trout, not sturgeon
- homophone trap
- unrelated entirely to Roe v Wade