Talk:Smelt (fish)

Oxymoron
Am I missing something or is the opening sentence an Oxymoron:

"Smelts – more precisely freshwater smelts or typical smelts ... – are a family of small fish, Osmeridae, found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans." Last I checked the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were not "freshwater" bodies of water. Is this just poor wording or am I missing something here??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.107.113.194 (talk) 01:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Why this redirect?
Why does "Smelt" redirect to "Great Lakes Smelts"? There are other smelts (osmeridae) in other parts of the world. The article even mentions six of them that have nothing to do with the Great Lakes: Allosmerus, Hypomesus, Mallotus (capelin), Osmerus, Spirinchus, Thaleichthys (candlefish). Besides there is the European smelt, Osmerus eperlanus. Something is fishy here. 20:12, 11 November 2006 User:Mlewan

WikiProject Food and drink Tagging
This article talk page was automatically added with WikiProject Food and drink banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here. Maximum and careful attention was done to avoid any wrongly tagging any categories, but mistakes may happen... If you have concerns, please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 21:23, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Unbelievable
I can not believe that someone added this: Smelts have a characteristic odour, similar to the smell of female reproductive organs.

Can we please not go there? Ugh. To be blunt, the person who believes this is true should hot-tail it down to their gynecologist ASAP. Panabode (talk) 10:27, 23 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Obviously it was someone's puerile attempt at humor. Equally obvious, it was a member of my own male gender, so I doubt a gynecological visit will help. ColmCille (talk) 00:55, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Where's the West Coast?
Not a single mention of the West Coast smelt (or ooligan, eulachon, candlefish, etc.) fishery, which has a major history here going back thousands of years and stretching from northern California to Alaska. I grew up dipping and eating smelt every spring in the Cowlitz river (a tributary of the Columbia, and definitely not small enough to straddle).

See this website for some of the history:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Smelt.htm ColmCille (talk) 01:02, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thaleichthys pacificus is mentioned. I would suggest adding that information to the main article. I'd do it myself, but I'm busy working on Hypomesus transpacificus at the moment.. ManfromButtonwillow (talk) 02:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Move?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

Page moved to Smelt (fish). Vegaswikian (talk) 03:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Smelts → Smelt —
 * Article title should not be plural Yzx (talk) 01:19, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Or Smelts to Smelt (fish) and Smelt (disambiguation) to Smelt? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 07:17, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Move to Smelt (fish) with Smelt (disambiguation) → Smelt per Anthony Appleyard. The fish is not the primary meaning as there is the furnace as well, but it should also not reside at the plurarl title. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 07:52, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Smelt (fish) doesn't seem necessary, since there are only two main articles involved. The fish can be at smelt, and the chemical process at smelting, and a hatnote would do for disambiguation. Other noun-verb article pairs do this, e.g. wax and waxing, or box and boxing. -- Yzx (talk) 09:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi - I don't agree with this... Just because there are only two topics involved, does not mean that the rules about primary page / disambiguation are changed. The furnace smelt is a noun as well as a verb and is certinaly a possible and likely target for the search term. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 09:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "Smelt", as a single word, is a noun only for the fish. Therefore, grammatically speaking the subject of an article entitled "smelt" can only mean the fish by the "use nouns" rule of Article_titles. "Smelt" is not a valid noun form of "smelting", just like "box" is not a valid noun form of "boxing". -- Yzx (talk) 10:14, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Yzx. The fish is unambiguously a noun, and smelting is unambiguously a process. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:12, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Move to Smelt (fish) with Smelt (disambiguation) → Smelt per Anthony Appleyard.
 * Prefer Anthony Appleyard's suggestion. 76.66.203.138 (talk) 05:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Is Dudley's School Smeltings a Reference to the Fish or Melting Metal?
In my class I am pushing my students to find the roots of names and illusions in Harry Potter. I had always assumed that Dudley's school, Smeltings, was a reference to melting metal. A student brought up the fish. Could this be the actual illusion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.68.171.187 (talk) 00:50, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Smelt (fish). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090223225041/http://injefestival.co.kr/english/main.asp to http://www.injefestival.co.kr/english/main.asp

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:32, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Etymology
Maybe, in an effort to be more properly encyclopedic, we could add some information regarding the etymology of the word "smelt." Apparently it comes from a hypothetical proto-Germanic word (with a proto-Indo-European root) meaning "to melt," possibly due to the fish's soft/fatty flesh. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 20:13, 6 May 2023 (UTC)