Surprisingly, this word, well-attested in Anglo-Norman and medieval Latin, first appears in English only in the eighteenth century.

The use of the word with reference to a type of fish is not attested in Continental French, but its validity is confirmed by the DMLBS sub aureolus 162c (sense 2: ‘kind of fish, gilt-head’). Confusingly, however, according to the DMLBS the Latin word which it glosses, phicedula, means only a ‘small bird’, possibly the ‘fig-pecker’ (sub ficedula, 935a).