crab
To fish for crabsTo fish for crabs.
» We ate canned crab for dinner.
CK · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
15 senses(intransitive)To fish for crabs.
fish for crab
(US, slang, transitive)To ruin.
(intransitive)To complain.
complain
(transitive)To complain about.
(intransitive)To drift or move sideways or to leeward (by analogy with the movement of a crab).
scurry sideways like a crab
To move in a manner that involves keeping low and clinging to surfaces.
(transitive)To move (a camera) sideways.
(transitive)To navigate (an aircraft, e.g. a glider) sideways against an air current in order to maintain a straight-line course.
(rare)To back out of something.
To make a loud, rapid rattling sound when scared, stressed, or agitated.
To be ill-tempered; to complain or find fault.
(British, dialectal)To cudgel or beat, as with a crabstick
Examples
78 sentencesOrigin
From Middle English crabbe, from Old English crabba (“crab; crayfish; cancer”), from ProtoFrom 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.
From Middle English crabbe (“wild apple”), of Germanic origin, plausibly from North Germanic, cognate with Swedish dialect skrabba (“sour apple, apple cart”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
crabs, crabbing, crabbed, crabbedSynonyms
6 synonymsWord family
3 related wordsLessons for this word
3 lessons- A1Present simple — Because it is a verb
- A1Past simple, regular verbs — Because of its past form
- A2Present perfect: introduction — Because of its past participle