Definition of "grunion" [grunion]

• A small fish (Leuresthes tenuis) of coastal waters of California and Mexico that spawns at night along beaches during the high tides of spring and summer. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A grunion is a small, sardinelike fish that lays its eggs on dry sand on certain full moon cycles each year."
• "Those mosh-pit women clot like those spawning fish called grunion, I said."
• "It is the story of the education, along with a few other of her shared memories of little things, that have brought my mother and Fitzgerald together alive for me: Fitzgerald looking at her “with such love,” with his head cocked to one side, the two of them lying at opposite ends of a sofa with their shoes and socks off and massaging one another's toes, the two of them at Malibu scooping into buckets the tiny fish called grunion that come onto the beach at night to spawn."