crab

CEFRB1

/kɹæb/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A sea animal with a hard shell and two claws.

  2. 02

    verb

    To complain in an annoyed way.

Examples

  • I regard crab as a great delicacy.

  • Snippy had the bluest blood of all his crab brethren.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
1

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. The meat of this crustacean, served as food; crabmeat.

  2. Various other animals that resemble true crabs:, Any of various crustacean in the infraorder Anomura, usually excluding squat lobsters.

  3. Any crustacean of the infraorder Brachyura, having five pairs of legs, the foremost of which are in the form of claws, and a carapace.

More examples

In context

  • You cannot make a crab walk straight.

  • Although crabs themselves are an easily treated inconvenience, the patient and his partner(s) clearly run major STD risks.

  • Despite its name, the hermit crab is not a true crab!

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The orange blank scuttled sideways across the sandy beach at low tide.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English crabbe, from Old English crabba (“crab; crayfish; cancer”), from Proto-West Germanic *krabbō, from Proto-Germanic *krabbô, from *krabbōną (“to scratch”), from Proto-Indo-European *grobʰeh₂yéti (“to scratch”), a metathesised o-grade of *gerbʰ- (“to carve, scratch”). More at carve. Cognates See also Dutch krab, Low German Krabb, Danish krabbe, Swedish krabba. Further cognates with frequentative-infix are Saterland Frisian krabbelje (“to creep, crawl”), Dutch krabbelen (“to scratch”) and German krabbeln (“to crawl”). Possibly related to English creep and Swedish krypa (“to creep, crawl”) etc. Other origins have also been suggested, see Ancient Greek κάραβος (kárabos) (regar...