Newsflash: Words that mean one thing here and now mean different things there and then.
Calling the fish "dolphin" made me pause for a second but it wasn't enough to stop my enjoyment of things. I could tell from context that he was talking about a fish, not a mammal, and therefore must be using the word in a way I was not familiar with. Given that I know next to nothing about Cuba, the language or the culture, and that the book is almost 70 years old, I expected to find words that I wasn't familiar with or used in unusual (to me) ways, so it wasn't a problem for me to get past that.
Wondering about Jon's editor comment, I did some further digging. It turns out that mahi-mahi, or the "common dolphinfish" is commonly called just "dolphin" or "dorado" and, furthermore, it is only a
recent change to the name to even call them "dolphinfish", they were originally just called dolphins.
Quote:
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The origin of the name "dolphinfish" is recent, to avoid confusion with dolphins, as the traditional name of the fish was also dolphin.
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This certainly doesn't appear to be an editorial mistake. Just changes to our language over the last 70 years.
References:
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