shrimp

CEFRB1

/ʃɹɪmp/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A small sea animal with a soft body and shell.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A small, puny or unimportant person.

Examples

  • She's made shrimp dumplings and added shiitakes with Sichuan pepper.

  • This chick is like a shrimp: I like everything about her but her head.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. The flesh of such crustaceans.

  2. Any of many swimming, often edible, crustaceans, chiefly of the infraorder Caridea or the suborder Dendrobranchiata, with slender legs, long whiskers and a long abdomen.

verb

Extra meaning

  1. To contract; to shrink.

More examples

In context

  • Shrimp farming is in its infancy in Africa. but Asia has most of the world's shrimp farms.

  • Butter well a deep dish, upon which place a thick layer of pounded biscuit; having picked and boiled your shrimps, put them upon the biscuit; a layer of shrimps, with small pieces of butter, a little pepper, mace or nutmeg.

  • Although the line is not always sharply drawn, offshore shrimping and inshore shrimping require different strategies.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

At the beachside restaurant, we ordered a plate of fried blank as an appetizer.

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

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English schrimpe (“shrimp, puny person”), possibly from or related to Middle Low German schrempen (“to wrinkle”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaz (“shrivelled”), from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną (“to shrivel”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kerbʰ-. See also Middle High German schrimpf (“a scratch, minor wound”), Norwegian skramp (“thin horse, thin man”); also Old English sċrimman (“to shrink”) and scrimp, Middle High German schrimpfen (“to shrink, dry up”), Swedish skrympa (“to shrink”); also Lithuanian skrembti (“to crust over, stiffen”), and possibly Albanian shkrumb (“embers, ashes; crumble”).