A small herring or a sand eel, especially as found in Scottish waters; also spelled garvock.
From Scots and Northern English dialect, possibly from Old Norse 'gervingr' or a similar Scandinavian root, reflecting centuries of fishing trade with Scandinavia.
The garvie was so important to Scottish and Irish fishing that it has multiple dialect spellings—garvie, garvock, garvy—showing how communities developed their own names for the fish that fed them.
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