crab

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a stroke of the oar that either misses the water or digs too deeply

   You caught a crab and lost the race.

2. 2
   verb

   to complain

   The children crabbed about the lack of comfortable seats.

3. 3
   verb

   to fish for crab

   I sat on the dock and crabbed for the whole afternoon.

4. 4
   verb

   to scurry sideways like a crab

   We crabbed around in gym class.

5. 5
   noun

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

   But Richmond[…]appeared to lose himself in his own reflections. Some pickled crab, which he had not touched, had been removed with a damson pie; and his sister saw[…]that he had eaten no more than a spoonful of that either.

6. 6
   noun

   Various other animals that resemble true crabs:

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

7. 7
   noun

   A bad-tempered person.

   She so obviously enjoyed every second of the concert that only the most stubborn crab could not have been warmed by her charm.

8. 8
   noun

   An infestation of pubic lice (Pthirus pubis).

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

Etymology

From Middle English crabbe, from Old English crabba (“crab; crayfish; cancer”), from Proto-West Germanic *krabbō, from Proto-Germanic *krabbô, from *krabbōną (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-Indo-European *grobʰeh₂yéti (“scratch, claw at”), 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 kry…