[var. of EELFARE.] A young eel, esp. a young conger or sea-eel. Also attrib., as in elver-cake, a cake made of elvers.
c. 1640. J. Smyth, Hundred Berkeley (1885), 319. Elvers, supposed by some to bee the younge eele.
1679. Locke, in Lord King, Life (1858), 134. At Bristol … taste … elvers.
1748. De Foe, etc. Tour Gt. Brit., II. 306. [Little eels] they make … into small Cakes … These Elver-cakes they dispose of at Bath and Bristol.
1726. Dict. Rust., Elvers, a sort of Griggs, or small Eels.
1863. H. C. Pennell, Angler-Naturalist, 394. The Eelets, or Elvers, are at first very small and transparent.
Hence Elverhood. nonce-wd.
1886. Fishing, 18 Sept., 414. Eels of the size caught … at the New Mills … must have passed all their lives since elverhood above the mills.
