Shotten Herring

A lean spiritless creature, a Jack-oʹ-Lent, like a herring that has shot or ejected its spawn. Herrings gutted and dried are so called also.

“Though they like shotten-herrings are to see,

Yet such tall souldiers of their teeth they be,

That two of them, like greedy cormorants,

Devour more then sixe honest Protestants.”

Taylor’s Workes, iii. 5.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.