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Crab   /kræb/   Listen
noun
Crab  n.  
1.
(Zool.) One of the brachyuran Crustacea. They are mostly marine, and usually have a broad, short body, covered with a strong shell or carapace. The abdomen is small and curled up beneath the body. Note: The name is applied to all the Brachyura, and to certain Anomura, as the hermit crabs. Formerly, it was sometimes applied to Crustacea in general. Many species are edible, the blue crab of the Atlantic coast being one of the most esteemed. The large European edible crab is Cancer padurus. Soft-shelled crabs are blue crabs that have recently cast their shells. See Cancer; also, Box crab, Fiddler crab, Hermit crab, Spider crab, etc., under Box, Fiddler. etc.
2.
The zodiacal constellation Cancer.
3.
(Bot.) A crab apple; so named from its harsh taste. "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl."
4.
A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick. (Obs.)
5.
(Mech.)
(a)
A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc.
(b)
A form of windlass, or geared capstan, for hauling ships into dock, etc.
(c)
A machine used in ropewalks to stretch the yarn.
(d)
A claw for anchoring a portable machine.
Calling crab. (Zool.) See Fiddler., n., 2.
Crab apple, a small, sour apple, of several kinds; also, the tree which bears it; as, the European crab apple (Pyrus Malus var. sylvestris); the Siberian crab apple (Pyrus baccata); and the American (Pyrus coronaria).
Crab grass. (Bot.)
(a)
A grass (Digitaria sanguinalis syn. Panicum sanguinalis); called also finger grass.
(b)
A grass of the genus Eleusine (Eleusine Indica); called also dog's-tail grass, wire grass, etc.
Crab louse (Zool.), a species of louse (Phthirius pubis), sometimes infesting the human body.
Crab plover (Zool.), an Asiatic plover (Dromas ardeola).
Crab's eyes, or Crab's stones, masses of calcareous matter found, at certain seasons of the year, on either side of the stomach of the European crawfishes, and formerly used in medicine for absorbent and antacid purposes; the gastroliths.
Crab spider (Zool.), one of a group of spiders (Laterigradae); called because they can run backwards or sideways like a crab.
Crab tree, the tree that bears crab applies.
Crab wood, a light cabinet wood obtained in Guiana, which takes a high polish.
To catch a crab (Naut.), a phrase used of a rower:
(a)
when he fails to raise his oar clear of the water;
(b)
when he misses the water altogether in making a stroke.


verb
Crab  v. t.  
1.
To make sour or morose; to embitter. (Obs.) "Sickness sours or crabs our nature."
2.
To beat with a crabstick. (Obs.)


Crab  v. i.  (Naut.)To drift sidewise or to leeward, as a vessel.


adjective
Crab  adj.  Sour; rough; austere. "The crab vintage of the neighb'ring coast."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books



... appearance of this having occurred that naturalists can hardly avoid employing language having this plain signification. According to the views here maintained, such language may be used literally; and the wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab retaining numerous characters, which they probably would have retained through inheritance, if they had really been metamorphosed from true though extremely simple legs, is in ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... selection of ovine vicera for the sacrifice—"the fat and the rump, and the fat that covereth the inwards and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys"; and into careful dietetics, which would cut out from our food list the hare and rabbit, the lobster, the crab, the turtle, the clam, oyster and scallop, indeed ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... to be more definite, Major Tom Slocomb of Pocomoke—was from one of the lower counties of the Chesapeake. He was supposed to own, as a gift from his dead wife, all that remained unmortgaged of a vast colonial estate on Crab Island in the bay, consisting of several thousand acres of land and water,—mostly water,—a manor house, once painted white, and a number of outbuildings in various stages ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a couple of other girls through the wide gardens of the place, seen and criticised the new brick pond, nodded to the daughter of this friend and that in the hammocks under the trees, and picked a way among the scattered tea-parties on the lawn to our own circle on the grass under a Siberian crab near the great bay window. There I sat and ate great quantities of cake, and discussed the tactics of the Suffragettes. I had made some comments upon the spirit of the movement in an address to the men in Pembroke, and it ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... to wisdom, we find that we have shut something out. Wisdom is the free, active life of a growing and attaching soul. We must not only attach information to ourselves, we must assimilate it. Else we are like a crab which should drag about Descartes, or as an ocean sucker which should ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown


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