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crab

UK/kɹæb/US/kɹæb/
nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,062 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: crabs

A crab is a sea animal with a hard shell that walks sideways. A crab on the sand, crab claws, catch a crab.

It walks sideways because its legs bend that way, which lets it move fastest across its own body line. It grows by shedding the whole shell and hardening a new one, and it is defenceless for hours afterwards. Note the crab apple and crabby, meaning bad-tempered, which are separate words.

Hans Hillewaert · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of crab

  1. 1nouncrabA sea animal with a hard shell and claws.B2

    “The children caught a small crab in a rock pool on the beach.”

crab is a sea creature.

Where it comes from

Old English crabba comes from a Germanic root meaning to scratch or claw.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gerbʰ-

  2. Proto-Indo-European

    *grobʰeh₂yéti — to scratch

  3. Proto-Germanic

    *krabbô

  4. Proto-West Germanic

    *krabbō

  5. Old English

    crabba — crab; crayfish; cancer

  6. Middle English

    crabbe

  7. English, today

    crab

Built from

  • *krabbōną · Proto-Germanic — to scratch
  • *gerbʰ- · Proto-Indo-European — to carve, scratch

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. 2 See also Dutch krab, Low German Krabb, Danish krabbe, Swedish krabba.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Animals

Practise this word

crab in the wild

  • The common name crab spider is often linked to species in this family, but may also be used for spiders from other families.

    Thomisidae

  • Many members of this family are also known as flower spiders or flower crab spiders.

    Thomisidae

  • The crab-eating macaque has developed a variety of cultural perceptions, from being smart and adaptive, to being sacred, to even being pests in some cases.

    Macaca fascicularis

  • Due to these threats, the crab-eating macaque was listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2022.

    Macaca fascicularis

  • The Japanese giant spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi) is a species of marine crab and is the largest crab found in the waters around Japan.

    Japanese spider crab

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • crabbed