A small oily fish, such as the eulachon or smelt, whose high fat content made it useful as fuel when dried and burned like a candle.
Compound: candle (Latin candela) + fish (Old English fisc). Indigenous peoples and early settlers of the Pacific Northwest used these fish as a sustainable light source.
Eulachon (a type of candlefish) were so fatty that Pacific Northwest tribes could dry them, put a rush through them, and literally burn them like candles—one fish could provide several hours of light!
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