Also 5–7 carpe. Pl. carp, formerly carps. [a. OF. carpe (Sp. carpa):—late L. carpa (Brachet cites Cassiodorus a. 575 ‘destinet carpam Danubius’). The same name (modified in termination, etc.) appears in Romanic, Celtic, Teutonic and Slavonic: cf. esp. OHG. charpho, MLG. karpe masc. pointing to a possible WGer. *karpo. But the original source is unknown.]
1. A freshwater fish, Cyprinus carpio, the type of the family Cyprinidæ; introduced into England as early as the 14th c., and commonly bred in ponds.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 62. Carpe, fysche, carpus.
1462. Mann. & Househ. Exp., 561. My master putte into the said ponde, in gret carpes, xxj.
1584. R. Scot, Discov. Witchcr., XIII. x. 248. A bone taken out of a carps head, stancheth bloud.
1653. Walton, Angler, I. ix. The Carp is the Queen of Rivers: a stately, a good, and a very subtle fish.
1718. Lady M. W. Montague, Lett., liv. II. 80. In the fish ponds are kept tame Carp, said to be, some of them, eighty years of age.
1770. White, Selborne, xl. 103. In this water are many carps.
1854. Badham, Halieut., 257. That singular fleshy palate which is popularly but incorrectly known all over the world as carp’s tongue.
1867. F. Francis, Angling, iii. (1880), 84. In rivers carp bite more boldly than they do in ponds.
2. Applied to other species of the genus Cyprinus, or family Cyprinidæ, to which belong the Gold and Silver Fish, the Prussian or Crucian Carp (C. gibelio), the Norwegian Carp (Scarpæna norvegica), and others.
1786. White, Selborne, xcviii. Gold and silver fishes … Linnæus ranks … under the genus of cyprinus or carp.
1847. Carpenter, Zool., § 567. The Cyprinidæ or Carp tribe.
1883. Fisheries Exhib. Catal. (ed. 4), 107. Collection of Stuffed … Carp, Crucian Carp; Gold Carp, 16 oz.
3. Comb.
1678–1706. Phillips, Carp-stone, a triangular stone found in the chop of a carp, white without and yellow within.
