Open a flat tin and look at what is inside. The fish are small, they are lying side by side, each one touching the next, turned so that the tin holds as many as it possibly can. Nothing in there chose its position, and there is no space left over. Every use of this word comes back to that tin — sometimes to the fish themselves, and sometimes to the way they are lying.
From the word’s history
The supplied source gives sardine as borrowed from French sardine, cognate with Spanish sardina and Italian sardina, from Latin sardīna, from Ancient Greek sardínē. The name is the fish; the crowding senses are later uses of the picture.
資料裡寫的是借自法文 sardine，與西班牙文 sardina、義大利文 sardina 同源，再往上是拉丁文 sardīna、古希臘文 σαρδίνη。這個名字本來就是魚；「擠」的那些用法是後來借用罐頭畫面才有的。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in evidence packet (kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:958016870): French sardine < Latin sardīna < Ancient Greek σαρδίνη.
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。