Also 6 ezox. [L. esox, a Gaulish word: cf. Welsh ëog, Ir. iach salmon.] The name of a large fish mentioned by Pliny (in first quot. app. identified with the Sturgeon); the Corpus Glossary (a. 800) renders the name by lax, i.e., salmon. In mod. Ichthyology used as the generic name of the Pike.
c. 1520. L. Andrewe, Noble Lyfe, in Babees Bk., 234. Ezox is a very grete fisshe in that water danowe be the londe of hungarye, he is of suche bygnes that a carte with iiij horses can nat cary hym awaye … he hath swete fisshe [? flesh] lyke a porke.
1706. Phillips, Esox, a great Fish in the River Rhine; a Lax.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1862), II. III. i. 303. The Esox or Pike.
1854. Badham, Halieut., 296. Pliny’s esox (a name which modern ichthyology has imposed upon the pike) is evidently a misnomer.
