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Crayfish   Listen
noun
Crayfish, Crawfish  n.  (pl. crayfishes or crayfish)  (Zool.)
1.
Any decapod crustacean of the family Astacidae (genera Cambarus and Cambarus), resembling the lobster, but smaller, and found in fresh waters. Crawfishes are esteemed very delicate food both in Europe and America. The North American species are numerous and mostly belong to the genus Cambarus. The blind crawfish of the Mammoth Cave is Cambarus pellucidus. The common European species is Astacus fluviatilis.
Synonyms: crawdad, crawdaddy.
2.
Tiny lobsterlike crustaceans usually boiled briefly.
Synonyms: crawdad, ecrevisse.
3.
A large edible marine crustacean having a spiny carapace but lacking the large pincers of true lobsters.
Synonyms: spiny lobster, langouste, rock lobster, crayfish, sea crawfish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crayfish" Quotes from Famous Books



... animal, was sulking in the corners covered with mire and with sea weed, in an immovability that made it easily confounded with the stones. Around these giants, like a democracy accustomed to endure from time to time the attack of the strong, crayfish and shrimps were swimming in shoals. Their movements were free and graceful, and their sensitiveness so acute that the slightest agitation made them start, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the Finnish word is rapu, appear to be found in nearly all the lakes and rivers in the south and middle of Finland. Oh, how we loved those crayfish. There is a close season for them which lasts from the 1st of May until the 15th of July, but immediately after the latter date they are caught by the tens of thousands and sent in large consignments ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... some are very delicious. Upon the shoals and reef there are incredible numbers of the finest green turtle in the world, and oysters of various kinds, particularly the rock-oyster and the pearl-oyster. The gigantic cockles have been mentioned already; besides which, there are sea-crayfish, or lobsters, and crabs: Of these, however, we saw only the shells. In the rivers and salt creeks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are especially apt to attack large beasts at this time; although during the very first days of their appearance, when they are just breaking their fast, they eat rather sparingly, and by preference the tender shoots of green grass and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish; it is not for a week or two that they seem to be overcome by lean, ravenous hunger. They will even attack and master that formidable fighter the moose, springing at it from an ambush as it passes—for a bull moose would ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... inquiry, How do they originate? To answer that question we must study the life histories of the minutest forms with the same continuity and thoroughness with which we study the development of a crayfish or a butterfly. The difficulty in the way of this is the extreme minuteness of the organisms. We require powerful and perfect lenses for the work. Happily during the last fifteen years the improvement in the structure of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... fish are found all round Jethou, the principal being lobsters, crabs, crayfish, spider crabs, plaice, John Dorey, soles, ormers, pollock, bass, gurnard, skate, cod, long-nose, rock fish, turbot, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... accustomed to toil over the long combers and stormy banks of the North Sea. The variety of fish taken alone made the voyage of absorbing interest, numbering cod, haddock, ling, hake, turbot, soles, plaice, halibut, whiting, crayfish, shark, dog-fish, and many quaint monsters unmarketable then, but perfectly edible. Among those taken in was the big angler fish, which lives at the bottom with his enormous mouth open, dangling an attractive-looking bait formed by a long rod growing ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... for the production of organisms he imagined "molecules organiques." Reaumur had previously (1712) conjectured that there were "germes caches et accumules" to account for the regeneration of the limbs of the crayfish. The ideas of Bonnet on germs are stated in his Memoires sur les Salamandres (1777-78-80) and in his Considerations sur les ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... conquered, and when his armies marched past in the wake of our own light infantry, our island grenadiers, our hussars, our dragoons, our artillery, and our engineers there were to be seen yellow soldiers looking in their blue armour like crayfish standing on their tails; red men with parrots' plumes, tattooed with solar and Phallic emblems, and with quivers of poisoned arrows resounding on their backs; naked blacks armed only with their teeth and nails; ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... no obstacles, and no man would know that he was strong if he could meet with no resistance to overcome. I for my part seek such exercises as suit my idiosyncrasy, and if they are not to your taste I cannot help it. If you were to set these excellently dressed crayfish before a fine horse he would disdain them, and could not understand how foolish men could find anything palatable that tasted so salt. Salt, in fact, is not suited to all creatures! Men born far from the sea do not relish oysters, while I, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... crayfish boiled, shell the tails, cut them in pieces, removing the black line inside. Cut three truffles into thick slices, heat them and the crayfish in some ordinary white sauce, enriched with the yolk of a raw egg, pepper and salt, and ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various

... a stone with my foot, a crayfish darted off and tried to hide. There were scores, hundreds of them, everywhere—fine, fat, luscious fellows, and in ten minutes I had a dozen of the largest in my bag, to roast on the now glowing fire beside a juicy pigeon. Salt I had none, but I did possess a ship biscuit and a piece ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke

... coloured with columbine flowers, white potage, or cream of almonds, bream of the sea, conger, soles, cheven, barbel with roach, fresh salmon, halibut, gurnets, broiled roach, fried smelt, crayfish or lobster, leche damask with the king's word or proverb flourished "une sanz plus." Lamprey fresh baked, flampeyn flourished with an escutcheon royal, therein three crowns of gold, planted with flowers ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... and cowries and other molluscs people the cracks and crevices of coral blocks, and congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones. In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest. Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds. Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... certain near relatives of the crabs and lobsters which have taken up their residence in fresh water, a different order of things prevails, for here we find some trace of maternal care. Thus, in the fresh-water crayfish the young not only leave the egg in a much more advanced stage, but they are carefully carried about by the mother, until they have learned to shift for themselves, which they do in a very few days. During this time they cling to the swimming legs of the parent by means ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... back. There came about a reg'lar change in him, and just at the time when you was comin' along. He woke up one night in a cold sweat and said he was eternally damned. 'Nonsense,' I says, 'it's them crayfish; you ought never to eat that ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... pheasants, partridges, hares, rabbits, woodcocks, snipes, turkeys, capons, pullets, fowls, chickens, tame pigeons.—Fish. Carp, tench, perch, eels, lampreys, crayfish, cod, soles, flounders, plaice, turbot, skate, thornback, sturgeon, smelts, whitings, crabs, lobsters, prawns, oysters.—Vegetables. Cabbage, savoys, coleworts, sprouts, brocoli, leeks, onions, beet, sorrel, chervil, endive, spinach, celery, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, turnips, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... almost all animals have truly a heart, not the larger creatures only, and those that have red blood, but the smaller, and pale-blooded ones also, such as slugs, snails, scallops, shrimps, crabs, crayfish, and many others; nay, even in wasps, hornets, and flies, I have, with the aid of a magnifying glass, and at the upper part of what is called the tail, both seen the heart pulsating myself, and shown ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... arranging our bivouac next night, l'Encuerado saw a crayfish, and set off with Lucien to try and catch some of them. I and Sumichrast started on the trail of some deer we had seen bounding past. We had scarcely gone more than five hundred yards before we ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... set a tripod, whose colour and texture shew its long use; fill it with clear snow water, boil it as long as would be necessary to turn fish white, and crayfish red; throw it upon the delicate leaves of choice tea, in a cup of yoo (a particular sort of porcelain). Let it remain as long as the vapour rises in a cloud, and leaves only a thin mist floating on ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... make use. He never has more than two meals a day, sometimes only one, and he will often start early in the morning on a deer hunt without having eaten any food and will hunt fill late in the afternoon. In addition to the fish, eels, and crayfish of the streams, the wild boar and wild chicken of the plain and woodland, he will eat iguanas and any bird he can catch, including crows, hawks, and vultures. Large pythons furnish especially toothsome steaks, so he says, but, if so, his taste in this respect is ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... infected with this feeling, and Marie's father would go partner with Jean no longer. Jean could not support a fishing smack by himself, and gave up the distant voyages, confining himself to the long-shore fishing, and disposing of his oysters, crayfish and prawns as best he could in the more remote villages. Meanwhile, old Aimee, getting older and more feeble, would sit knitting in the cottage by a cheerless hearth, and as the supply of potatoes, chestnuts and black bread grew scantier ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... claws, and a number of little ones, and with these claws they walk around, backward, on the bottom of the ocean or bay, and pick up things to eat. In some inland rivers and streams there are what are called crayfish, or crabs. They are very much like lobsters, only, of course, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope

... and Sturgeons. Prawns. small. Sheath-fish. Smelts. Roaches. Mackerels. Rock-fish. Cockerels. Maids. Gracious lords. Minnows. Plaice. Sword-fish. Skate-fish. Sharplings. Soles. Lamprels. Tunnies. Mussels. Jegs. Silver eels. Lobsters. Pickerels. Chevins. Great prawns. Golden carps. Crayfish. Dace. Burbates. Pallours. Bleaks. Salmons. Shrimps. Tenches. Salmon-peels. Congers. Ombres. Dolphins. Porpoises. Fresh cods. Barn trouts. Bases. Dried melwels. Miller's-thumbs. Shads. Darefish. Precks. Murenes, a sort of Fausens, and grigs. Bret-fish. lampreys. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... has got one; he has indeed!" shouted Bouldon, as Gregson produced, by the antennae, a crayfish, which, to prevent himself from being bitten, he caught by the back; its claws, though they stretched wide open, as if they had the cramp very badly, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... below, of the infinite time during which a body would continue sinking through dense, chilly bulk until sight faded and the heart stopped beating. Yes, before my mind's eye there arose men drowned and devoured by crayfish, men with crumbling skulls and swollen features, and glassy, bulging eyes and puffy hands and outstretched fingers and palms of which the skin had rotted off with ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... Croker drew that picture of Coomara the Merrow, when he probably never saw a sea crayfish, a lobster, or even a prawn at home, I cannot account for, except by the divining and prophetic instincts of genius. And when I speak of his seeing a crayfish, a lobster, or a prawn at home, I mean at their home, and not at Mr. Croker's. Two ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... when she and her sister and the unfortunate gentleman from whom they had bought Aline's manuscript went crayfishing in Elysian Fields street canal, always taking the dolls along, "so not to leave them lonesome"; how the dolls had visibly enjoyed the capture of each crayfish; and how she and Corinne and the dolls would delight in the same sport to-day, but, alas! "that can-al was fil' op! and tha'z another thing ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... thread, instead of two, in every loop. This net appears to have been used either as a landing net, or for the purpose of carrying the fish when taken. They have also small hoop nets, in which they catch lobsters, and sea crayfish. Their canoes and other implements are very exactly described by ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... the boat-hook to William, who, lowering it down into the water, drove the spike of iron at the end of it into a large crayfish, which he hauled up into ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... out with large wooden scoops, and feed them to the pigs or fertilize the land with them. Finding he had more than one auditor, the fishing store-keeper questioned the Squire about the contents of his brook, and, learning that dace, chubs, and crayfish were its only occupants, promised to send Mrs. Carruthers a basket of trout when the season came round. In order to give a classical turn to the conversation, the dominie mentioned the name of Isaac Walton and referred to his poor opinion of the chub in ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... beautiful translucent stones in their heads—the ear-stones or otoliths—by the laminated structure of which we can now determine the age of a fish just as a tree's age is told by the annual rings of growth in the wood of its stem. The fresh-water crayfish has a very curious pair of opaque stones (concretions of carbonate and phosphate of lime) formed in its gizzard as a normal and regular thing. They are familiar to every student who dissects a crayfish, and I am told that in Germany to-day, as ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... bones Of my bosom; till a trance God sends in middle of that dance, And I behold the countenance Of Michael, and can feel no more The bitter east wind biting sore My naked feet; can see no more The crayfish on the leaden floor, That mock with ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... a word comes from a foreign language, those who use it, not understanding it properly, give a twist to the word or to some part of it from the hospitable desire to make the word at home in its new quarters, no regard, however, being paid to the sense. The most familiar instance in English is crayfish from the French ecrevisse, though it is well known that a crayfish is not a fish at all. Amongst the Mohammedans in India there is a festival at which the names of "Hassan" and "Hosein" are frequently called out by devotees. Tommy Atkins, to whom the names ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... lovely one, and how I wished to be treading it; there were beautiful shells lying on the smooth white sand, some were empty like those I had occasionally seen on marble mantelpieces, but out of others peered the heads and bodies of wondrous crayfish; a wood of thick green trees skirted the beach and partly shaded it from the rays of the sun, which shone hot above, while blue waves slightly crested with foam were gently curling against it; there was a human ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... written a delightful treatise on "A Piece of Chalk," and another on "The Crayfish;" a French writer has produced an entertaining volume entitled "The Story of a Stick;" the books of the Bible, considered from a scientific or bibliographical point of view, should repay our study not less richly than ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... fine bream, which he had found struggling in a rock-pool, the tide having turned, and three sea crayfish, bigger than any lobster. He chopped their heads off outside, and threw their tails into the pots; he stuck a piece of pointed wood through the bream, and gave it to Welch to toast; ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... replied Polybius, signing to a slave to bring him back the cup. But he drank only half of it, and, at his sister's pathetic entreaties, had more water mixed with the wine. And while Praxilla carefully prepared his crayfish—for gout had crippled even his fingers—he beckoned to his white-haired body-slave, and with a cunning smile made him add more wine to the washy fluid. He fixed his twinkling glance on Melissa, to invite her sympathy in his successful trick, but her appearance startled him. How pale ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... to be a banquet. Piled up in the centre of the table was a large dish of crayfish, and at each plate—there were five—were groups of large ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... of Angus. Nevertheless, with northern persistency, Dalrymple corrected him for the hundredth time. The doctor's first attempt had resulted in his calling the Scotchman 'Sor Langusta,' which means 'Sir Crayfish'—and it must be admitted that 'Anguish' ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... (?).—In Fig. 40 we have a fine specimen, intended apparently to represent a crayfish or some similar crustacean form. The head is supplied with complicated yet graceful antenna-like appendages, made of wire neatly coiled and welded together by pressure or hammering. The eyes are ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... of honor to be termed "not responsible!" It was asserted that the nomination was made secretly, in a private house, by two or three unauthorized harum-scarums (that touched the very bone) who had with more caution than propriety withheld their names. The article was headed, "The Crayfish-eaters' Ticket." It continued further to say that, had not the publication of this ticket been regarded as a dull hoax, it would not have been suffered to pass for two weeks unchallenged, and that it was now high time the universal wish should ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... of dealing with food. The food supply consists of plantain, yam, koko, sweet potatoes, maize, pumpkin, pineapple, and ochres, fish both wet and smoked, and flesh of many kinds—including human in certain districts—snails, snakes, and crayfish, and big maggot-like pupae of the rhinoceros beetle and the Rhyncophorus palmatorum. For sweetmeats the sugar-cane abounds, but it is only used chewed au naturel. For seasoning there is that bark that tastes like an onion, an onion distinctly passe, but powerful ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... Elephanta, so named by the Portuguese because of a huge rock cut in the shape of an elephant thirty-five feet long, and Trombay, whose lovely rock rises nine hundred feet above the surface of the sea. Bombay looks, on the maps, like an enormous crayfish, and is at the head of the rest of the islands. Spreading far out into the sea its two claws, Bombay island stands like a sleepless guardian watching over his younger brothers. Between it and the Continent there is a narrow arm of a river, which gets gradually ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... foul in the bottom with great logs and trees that we often break our nets upon them. I cannot reckon nor give proper names to the divers kinds of fresh fish in our rivers. I have caught with mine angle, carp, pike, eel, perches of six several kinds, crayfish and the torope or little turtle, besides ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... Basket after basket of cooked fish, crayfish, pigeons, baked pork, bunches of bananas and kits of oranges and heaps of luscious pineapples would be placed before us, and they seemed absolutely pained at my inability to eat more than a few mouthfuls. All the ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... Much the largest proportion is undulating, dry, and extremely fertile. Other portions are level, and the soil in some cases proves to be wet;—the water, not running off freely, is left to be absorbed by the soil, or evaporated by the sun. Crawfish throw up their hillocks in this soil, and the farmer who cultivates it, will find his ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... into the Hydraulic, and though the edges of the culverts were good for jumping off of, the boys did not find them of much practical value. Sometimes you could catch sunfish in the Hydraulic, but it was generally too swift, and the only thing you could depend upon was catching crawfish. These abounded so that if you dropped a string with a bit of meat on it into the water anywhere, you could pull it up again with two or three crawfish hanging to it. The boys could not begin to use them ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... gammon Is counted dainty fare; But what is't to a salmon Just taken from the Ware; Wheat-ears and quailes, Cocks, snipes and rayles, Are prized while season's lasting, But all must stoop to crawfish soup, Or I've no skill ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... shell, till by a great effort he heaved it off altogether. After that he gradually developed into a man and became the progenitor of the Turtle clan. (E.A. Smith, "Myths of the Iroquois", "Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology" (Washington, 1883), page 77.) The Crawfish band of the Choctaws are in like manner descended from real crawfish, which used to live under ground, only coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once a party of Choctaws smoked them out, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them to walk on two ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others



Words linked to "Crayfish" :   genus Palinurus, family Astacidae, sea crawfish, rock lobster, decapod crustacean, Old World crayfish, langouste, decapod, Astacura, shellfish, Palinurus, lobster, spiny lobster, crawdad



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