crab
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /kɹæb/
enpr: krăb
rhymes: -æb
Forms: form: crabs
form: crabbing
form: crabbed
form: crabbed
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-. 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 krypa (“to creep, crawl”) etc.
Other origins have also been suggested, see Ancient Greek κάραβος (kárabos) (regarding the possibility of a substrate origin) and Persian خرچنگ (regarding possible ideophonic origin); compare also Old Armenian քարբ (kʻarb), German Krebs.
Senses: glosses: To fish for crabs.
examples: text: I thought at the time that that little speech meant a savin' of eight dollars,[…] But the Missus crabbed it a few minutes after her and Bess come in the room.
ref: 1916, Ring W. Lardner, “Three Kings and a Pair”, in The Saturday Evening Post:
text: ‘Just so we understand each other,’ he said after a pause. ‘If you crab this case, you'll be in a jam.’
ref: 1940, Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely, Penguin, published 2010, page 224:
glosses: To ruin.
examples: text: “The thing to do is to forget about the heat,” said Tom impatiently. “You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it.”
ref: 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 7, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 127:
text: And if we do have to walk, I don't want to have to listen to you crabbing at me, Tad Trenton.
ref: 1981, Stephen King, Cujo, published 2001, page 163:
glosses: To complain.
examples: text: Well, because of this state of things they crabbed his scheme from the first, ridiculed it, wrote against it, spread broadcast a feeling of distrust.
ref: 2007, Douglas Newton, Dr. Odin, page 24:
glosses: To complain about.
examples: text: Mutt stalked forward, matching him, step for step, crabbing sideways the way wolves do when they're going for the kill.
ref: 2000, Dana Stabenow, Midnight Come Again, →ISBN, page 251:
text: The aircraft crabbed sideways in the cross-winds and leveled to horizontal.
ref: 2007, Pat DePaolo, The Beijing Games, →ISBN, page 454:
text: Another shouted order and again the squares crabbed sideways.
ref: 2015, Andrew Swanston, Waterloo: The Bravest Man, →ISBN:
glosses: To drift or move sideways or to leeward (by analogy with the movement of a crab).
examples: text: Time slowed down then, became liquid in the aftermath of his grotesque, unfolding limbs; he crabbed his way down the faded line, rocking back and forth in braces he would use all his life.
ref: 2011, Robert Vivian, The Least Cricket of Evening, page 108:
text: Foot by foot, he crabbed his way down another ninety feet of rock chimney until he stood on solid ground again, still very much alive.
ref: 2019, Ronan Frost, White Peak:
glosses: To move in a manner that involves keeping low and clinging to surfaces.
examples: text: If panning is not easy to make seem natural, crabbing the camera is even less like any action we perform with our eyes in the real world. There are a few circumstances in which we walk sideways: […]
ref: 1997, Paul Kriwaczek, Documentary for the Small Screen, page 109:
topics: broadcasting
film
media
television
glosses: To move (a camera) sideways.
topics: aeronautics
aerospace
aviation
business
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: To navigate (an aircraft, e.g. a glider) sideways against an air current in order to maintain a straight-line course.
glosses: To fly slightly off the straight-line course towards an enemy aircraft, as the machine guns on early aircraft did not allow firing through the propeller disk.
examples: text: “Nothing can possibly go wrong.” “Just as you say, sir. But I still have that feeling.” The blood of the Woosters is hot, and I was about to tell him in set terms what I thought of his bally feeling, when I suddenly spotted what it was that was making him crab the act.
ref: 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XV, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
glosses: To back out of something.
Derived terms: crabber
crabbing
crabble