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• n  small fatty European fish; usually smoked or canned like sardines
• n  small herring processed like a sardine

• In London he would have been a sprat in a sea of talent.
• Congress fretted and fumbled; its appropriations, snapped Quartermaster General Nathanael Greene, were "no more equal to our wants than a sprat in a whale's belly.

• brisling
• Clupea sprattus