Happy Friday to you! It’s time once again for Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day and my own personal challenge to come up with a Haiku using the word! Today’s “Inconnu” is an interesting word that seems, at first glance, to have a split personality, but I happened upon the history behind the mystery!

Dictionary.com’s definition for inconnu

1. a person who is unknown; stranger.
2. Also called sheefish. a game fish, Stenodusleucichthys, of fresh or brackish northern waters.

“inconnu originated in the early 1800’s and comes from the French term of the same spelling, which literally means “unknown.” It shares a Latin root with cognition defined as “the act or process of knowing.”

So…how did the French word “inconnu” come to be the alternate name of the Sheefish, a large, long-lived migratory salmon/whitefish/pike-like fish that lives near the Arctic Circle?

According to the Canada Department of Marine’s Annual Report, Volume 33 the story goes that French explorers to the Mackenzie River area were so puzzled by this odd fish that was a cross between a pike and a whitefish, that they called it the “don’t-know-what-fish” or the “undetermined fish”…hence the “Inconnu”… and the name stuck. It is also interesting to note that the Native Montagnais Indians of the area also called this fish “ouananiche”, translated to “the little what-is-it fish” or the “Little below-the-rapids pool fish.”

Such varied applications of this word definitely call for two Haiku! Have a great Weekend!

Inconnu…the Unknown

Clever “Anon”
that wise inconnu author
suffers no critics!

~ kat ~ 13 November 2015

Watercolor Painting by Detlef Buettner
http://home.gci.net/~lifesize.fish/

Inconnu…the Weird Fish!

Let’s have a fish fry!
Some little what-is-it fish…
french-fried inconnu.

~ kat ~ 13 November 2015