Meaning

noun the fatty flesh of eel; an elongate fish found in fresh water in Europe and America; large eels are usually smoked or pickled

noun voracious snakelike marine or freshwater fishes with smooth slimy usually scaleless skin and having a continuous vertical fin but no ventral fins

originFrom Middle English el (“eel”), from Old English ǣl (“eel”), from Proto-West Germanic *āl (“eel”), from Proto-Germanic *ēlaz (“eel”), which is of unknown origin. Cognates Cognate with West Frisian iel (“eel”), Dutch aal (“eel”), German Low German Aal, Ool (“eel”), German Aal (“eel”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish ål (“eel”), Faroese állur, álur (“eel”), Icelandic áll…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0