the.com/sea bass

means A common restaurant-menu term for various unrelated fish species marketed under one vaguely upscale name.

from 'Bass' traces back to Old English 'bærs,' meaning a prickly or bristly fish, referring to its spiny fins — related to the German 'Barsch.' 'Sea' was tacked on to distinguish ocean-dwelling species from freshwater bass, but 'sea bass' was never a precise biological category — it became a catch-all marketing label applied to many unrelated fish (Chilean sea bass, for instance, is actually the Patagonian toothfish, a name far less likely to sell dinner).