A young female salmon or a young sow; a dialectal or Scottish term for a young female animal, especially fish or pigs.
Possibly related to 'gilt' (young sow) or 'gilse' (young salmon), from Old Norse or Proto-Germanic roots related to 'yield' or 'young.' Scottish and Northern English dialectal term.
Scottish fishing vocabulary is packed with specific words for young fish—gilpey, gilse, parr, smolt—each marking a precise life stage, showing how specialized knowledge gets encoded into hyper-specific language.
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