shellfish

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an aquatic invertebrate with a shell, especially a mollusk or crustacean

   The tide pool contained small shellfish beneath the rocks.

2. 2
   noun

   edible aquatic invertebrates, or their meat, considered as food

   The restaurant keeps raw shellfish chilled on ice.

Inherited from Middle English schellefish and Old English scielfisc, a compound of shell and fish. Fish is used here in its older broad sense for an aquatic creature, not the narrower zoological sense; shellfish are invertebrates rather than true fish.

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