prawn

CEFRB1

/pɹɔːn/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A small sea animal with a hard shell, eaten as food.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A crustacean, sometimes confused with shrimp.

Examples

  • He ordered a delicious grilled prawn dish for dinner.

  • The prawn cocktail was delicious.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
3
Synonyms
1

Also pronounced

  • /pɹoːn/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face.

  2. A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.

verb

Extra meaning

  1. To fish for prawns.

More examples

In context

  • She's a prawn!

  • The aphrodisiac nature of prawns is evident in an epigram by the Greek poet Asclepiades.

  • This is utter dribble. I've not read much worse than this in a long time - and he admits he doesn't know - "or so I am told". Get real, you prawn.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The chef added a large blank to the soup for extra seafood flavor.

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

Nearby

Origin

noun

First attested early 1400s as various Middle English forms prayne, prane, praune, and prawne, which present no clear cognates in languages other than English. The forms suggest a hypothetical Old English form *prægn, where *æg would have evolved into Middle English *ay, but it is unclear if the word is of Germanic origin, from another European language, or loaned from a substrate. In the Isle of Wight, a word prankle ("prawn") is recorded and thought to be related. Century, following Skeat, suggested transposition of an unrecorded Old French *parne, *perne related to Spanish perna (“a flat shellfish”), Old Italian perna and diminutive pernochie, parnocchie, glossed as "shrimps or prawne, fi...