shrimp

/ʃrɪmp/

/ʃrɪmp/

Other forms: shrimps; shrimping; shrimped

A shrimp is a small crustacean that lives on the ocean floor. You may be most familiar with the shrimp you order at a seafood restaurant, but there are over 2,000 species of shrimp in the world.

While many people think of shrimp as a delicious part of a pasta dish or seafood buffet, there's much more to these tiny animals. Shrimp are invertebrates, with hard exoskeletons, antennae, and eyes on long stalks. They live at the bottom of the ocean, where they filter sand and particles for algae and plankton. Shrimp probably comes from the Old Norse skreppa, "thin person," and fittingly, shrimp is also a mildly derogatory term for a small person.

Definitions of shrimp

1. noun

   small slender-bodied chiefly marine decapod crustaceans with a long tail and single pair of pincers; many species are edible
   types:

   pistol shrimp, snapping shrimp

   small shrimp that makes a snapping noise with one of their enlarged chelae

   type of:

   decapod, decapod crustacean

   crustaceans characteristically having five pairs of locomotor appendages each joined to a segment of the thorax
2. noun

   any of various edible decapod crustaceans
   synonyms: prawn

   types:

   river prawn

   large Australian prawn

   type of:

   seafood

   edible fish (broadly including freshwater fish) or shellfish or roe etc
3. noun

   disparaging terms for small people
   synonyms: half-pint, peewee, runt

   type of:

   small person

   a person of below average size
4. verb

   fish for shrimp
   type of:

   fish

   catch or try to catch fish or shellfish