[f. prec. sb.]
1. trans. a. To cut off the fins from (a fish). b. To cut up (a chub).
1513. Bk. Keruynge, in Babees Bk. (1868), 265. Fynne that cheuen.
1799. Sporting Mag., XIV. April, 10/2. Fin a chub, cut him up.
1853. Fraser’s Mag., XLVIII. Dec., 694, note. When he puts the slice into a fish, that he gobbets trout, truncheons eel, fins chub, tusks barbel, splates pike, solays bream, and sides haddock.
2. nonce-use. To keep supplied with fish. Cf. FIN sb. 1 c.
1808. J. Barlow, The Columbiad, VIII. 483.
| Renascent swarms by nature’s care supplied, | |
| Repeople still the shoals and fin the fruitful tide. |
3. U.S. Of a fish: To wound with its fins. Also intr. of a whale, To fin (out): to lash the water with its fins when dying.
1889. Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, 15 Feb. He had never been bitten by a dog, but … had been finned by fish.
Hence Finning vbl. sb., in quot. attrib. (sense 1 a).
1883. Fisheries Exhib. Catal., 197. Finning and flitching knives.
