What is "alewife"

Alewife \Ale"wife`\, n.; pl. Alewives. A woman who keeps an alehouse.
--Gay.

Alewife \Ale"wife`\, n.; pl. Alewives. [This word is properly aloof, the Indian name of a fish. See Winthrop on the culture of maize in America, ``Phil Trans.'' No. 142, p. 1065, and Baddam's ``Memoirs,'' vol. ii. p. 131.] (Zo["o]l.) A North American fish ( Clupea vernalis) of the Herring family. It is called also ellwife, ellwhop, branch herring. The name is locally applied to other related species.

herring-like fish of North America, 1630s, named from the word for female tavern keepers (late 14c.), from ale + wife; the fish so called in reference to its large abdomen.

Etymology 1 n. (context archaic English) A woman who keeps an alehouse. Etymology 2

n. 1 A North American fish, (taxlink Clupea vernalis species noshow=1), of the herring family. 2 A migrating North American fish, (taxlink Alosa pseudoharengus species noshow=1). 3 Any of several species similar in appearance.

1. n. flesh of shad-like fish abundant along the Atlantic coast or in coastal streams

2. shad-like food fish that runs rivers to spawn; often salted or smoked; sometimes placed in genus Pomolobus [syn: Alosa pseudoharengus, Pomolobus pseudoharengus]

3. [also: alewives (pl)]

The alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) is an anadromous species of herring found in North America. It is one of the "typical" North American shads, attributed to the subgenus Pomolobus of the genus Alosa. As an adult it is a marine species found in the northern West Atlantic Ocean, moving into estuaries before swimming upstream to breed in fresh water habitats, but some populations live entirely in fresh water. It is best known for its invasion of the Great Lakes by using the Welland Canal to bypass Niagara Falls. Here its population surged, peaking between the 1950s and 1980s to the detriment of many native species of fish, and Pacific salmon were introduced to control them. As a marine fish, the alewife is a US National Marine Fisheries Service "Species of Concern".

Alewife is an MBTA Red Line subway station located in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. The northern terminus of the Red Line, Alewife serves as a local intermodal transit hub. Its facilities include a multi-level parking garage with 2,733 spaces, three secured bicycle cages, a busway with an enclosed shelter serving several MBTA Bus routes, and connections to the Minuteman Bikeway, Cambridge Linear Park, and the Fitchburg Cutoff Path. Alewife is located adjacent to the interchange between Alewife Brook Parkway and the Massachusetts Route 2 freeway, with ramps providing direct access to and from the expressway portion of Route 2.

Alewife opened on March 30, 1985. Originally only to be a temporary terminus during construction of the Arlington section of the Red Line, Alewife became the regular terminus when the further extension was canceled. The station is named after Alewife Brook, a nearby tributary of the Mystic River, which in turn is named after the alewife fish which inhabits the Mystic River system. Alewife features six pieces of public art which were built as part of the first stage of the Arts on the Line program.

Alewife was a cache coherent multiprocessor developed in the early 1990s by a group led by Anant Agarwal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was based on a network of up to 512 processing nodes, each of which used the Sparcle computer architecture, which was formed by modifying a Sun Microsystems SPARC CPU to include the APRIL techniques for fast context switches.

The Alewife project was one of two predecessors cited by the creators of the popular Beowulf cluster multiprocessor.

An alewife is a kind of fish. Alewife may also refer to:

• Alewife (trade), a common profession for women in the Middle Ages and in ancient Mesopotamia
• Alewife Brook Reservation, a state park in Massachusetts
• Alewife (MBTA station), a local transportation hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Alewife (multiprocessor), a computer system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Alewife, also brewess or brewster, is a historical term for a woman who brewed ale for commercial sale.