Plural of eel; long, slippery fish with snake-like bodies that live in water and sometimes travel across land.
From Old English 'æl,' likely from Proto-Germanic 'ælaz.' The word is ancient and appears in similar forms across Germanic languages, though its ultimate origin is uncertain—possibly related to words for 'slippery' or borrowed from pre-Indo-European sources.
European eels are famous for being born in the Sargasso Sea (middle of the Atlantic) and somehow navigate thousands of miles back to European rivers as babies—scientists still don't fully understand how they navigate without a known map.
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