brit

Note: The word was applied earlier to the fry of herring and sprat. The attribution to Cornish brȳthel "mackerel" in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (1961) and American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition (2020) is improbable on both phonetic and semantic grounds. R. Morton Nance (A Glossary of Cornish Sea-Words, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, 1963) notes that the word was initially peculiar to Cornwall and north Devon, but seemingly not of Celtic origin.