? Obs. Also 7 cackarel, cackrel. [a. obs. F. caquerel (also cagarel, cagaret) Cotgr., ad. Pr. cagarel, cagarello (also, according to Duhamel, gagarel, whence Cuvier’s specific name gagarella); app. f. Pr. cagar:—L. cacāre (see CACK v.), with which the name is popularly associated.
(Variously etymologized as ‘a fish which voids excrements when pursued’ or ‘which when eaten relaxes the bowels’; M. Paul Meyer suggests that the name is merely one of contempt = ‘méchant petit poisson,’ ‘poisson chétif.’ The allied Mæna is now in Pr. picarel, dim. of picaro ‘rogue, rascal.’)]
1. A small fish of the Mediterranean: the name is applied by the fishermen of Marseilles and Toulon to Smaris gagarella (Cuv.), and perhaps to other similar species of the same genus of small sea-breams. Early writers used the word to english Pliny’s mæna ‘a kind of small sea-fish, eaten salted by the poor,’ now the name of a genus closely akin to Smaris.
1583. J. Higins, trans. Junius’ Nomenclator, Mæna … a cackrell, so called, because it maketh the eaters laxative: some take it for a herring or sprat.
1601. Holland, Pliny, I. 249. Cackarels change their colour: for these fishes being white all Winter, wax blacke when Summer comes. Ibid., II. 442. Salt Cackerels.
1632. Sherwood, Eng.-Fr. Dict., A cackerell (fish), cagarel, caquerel, cagaret, juscle: bocque, mandole, mendole, mene.
1634. Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (1677), 187. Fish, whose ordinary abode is in salt waters, namely Porpice,… Cackrel, Skate, Soles, [etc.].
1721–90. in Bailey.
1755. Johnson, Cackerel, a fish said to make those who eat it laxative.
2. [as if f. CACK.] Dysentery (F. caquesangue).
1659. Howell, Lex. Tetrag. It. Prov., 19. May the Cackrel take him [transl. It. cacasangue].
