sea donkey

sea donkey (plural sea donkeys)

1. The common name for various fish, especially the hake or the spadefish.
   • 1958, Review of the Fisheries of British Guiana, page 10:

     The ectoparasitic isopod, Nerocila armata Dana, so common on the head of small Sea Donkey (Chaetodipterus faber) was also sometimes attached to Sea Trout fins or head.

   • 1960, World Fishing - Volume 9, page 27:

     Some of the fish commonly caught in the trawl off British Guiana were croaker, bangamary, sea trout, sea patwa, annafolk, sea donkey, pomfret, moonfish, mackerel, barracuda and blue fish

   • 2018, William Fortenbaugh, Eudemus of Rhodes, page 211:

     Other reports suggest a taste for marvels, at least in his audience: the peculiar anatomy of the “sea-donkey” or hake, which has its heart “in the middle of its gut” […]

   • 2023, Talmud:

     The sea-donkey is allowed, but not the sea-ox; and you remember this by the following mark: the unclean (on earth?) is clean, while the clean is unclean.

2. Someone or something that lives or works at sea and is similar in some way to a donkey, especially by performing humble tasks.
   • 1895, William Clark Russell, The Honour of the Flag, page 88:

     There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier.

   • 1947, K. H. C. Lo, Forgotten Wave, page 96:

     Looking at me you would think that I am just an old 'sea donkey'; you would never have thought that I have shaken hands with the very Emperor of Great Britain!

   • 2001, David McGill, Island of Secrets: Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington Harbour, page 131:

     ON316446 arrived at Somes in 1948 to her proud new launchmaster Ken Weir, his wife bestowing the island's original name Matiu on the vessel. Matiu had 44 years to go as sea donkey for the quarantine station and its islanders.

   • 2010, T. M. Shine, Nothing Happens Until It Happens to You, page 57:

     The dolphin is struggling, trudging as if it were a burro trying to go up a rocky incline—a sea donkey.

3. A term of opprobrium.
   • 1876, Theresa West, All for an Ideal: a Girl's Dream of a Past Period, page 139:

     You've more brass than a highwayman, you fat-headed sea-donkey!

   • 1884, Theresa Cornwallis J. West, The doom of Doolandour - Volume 3, page 67:

     You fat-headed son of a sea donkey! You portentous prig! You are a nice trainer for hopeful ingenuous youth!

   • 2013, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, Downturn Abbey:

     I mean, there she was on the radio this morning – you heard her – finally admitting what a bet-down, gin-soaked, sea-donkey of a mother she was to me growing up.

   • 2015, James De Lorenzi, Guardians of the Tradition, page 88:

     You with a cat's eye and baboon's hair, you white-assed sea donkey from across seven rivers!