Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various shrimps, especially one that is large or inhabits fresh water.
- noun The flesh of a prawn, used as food.
- intransitive verb To fish for prawns.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A longtailed ten-footed crustacean, Palæmon serratus, abundant on the shores of Great Britain, resembling the shrimp, but having a long serrate rostrum; hence, any species of the family Palæmonidæ.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Zoöl.) Any one of numerous species of large shrimplike Crustacea having slender legs and long antennæ. They mostly belong to the genera Pandalus, Palæmon, Palæmonetes, and Peneus, and are much used as food. The common English prawn is
Palæmon serratus .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A large
shrimp . - noun slang A
woman with a very toned body, but an unattractive face. - verb intransitive To
fish for prawns.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun shrimp-like decapod crustacean having two pairs of pincers; most are edible
- verb fish for prawns
- noun any of various edible decapod crustaceans
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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I liked when he guest-starred on The Simpsons—I still chuckle whenever the sentence "Three prawns are hardly a galaxy!" comes to mind, which is pretty much whenever I hear the word prawn or read the word galaxy.
Nick Mamatas' Journal nihilistic_kid 2010
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It was a variation on a wonderful 17-year old joke by Michael Heseltine from back before the 1992 election, when he taunted Labour leaders Neil Kinnock and John Smith for trying to woo the financial community with a series of lunches and dinners in the City of London - what became known as the prawn cocktail offensive. wrote:
BBC Blog Network 2009
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Wrong, the name is from a type of grasshopper found in southafrica/nigera called the prawn
The Anatomy of “District 9″ - Eric’s review » Scene-Stealers 2009
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English lobster is a species, our cray fish is another, our prawn is another.
Essays 2007
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Spinning is usually practised when the water is too high or too coloured for the fly; trolling is seldom employed, but is useful for exploring pools which cannot be fished by spinning or with the fly; the prawn is a valuable lure in low water and when fish are unwilling to rise; while the worm is killing at all states of the river, but except as a last resource is not much in favour.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 Various
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The English lobster is a species, our cray fish is another, our prawn is another.
Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews Thomas Henry Huxley 1860
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The English lobster is a species, our cray fish is another, our prawn is another.
Lectures and Essays Thomas Henry Huxley 1860
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"We had a boat, and I would see these extraordinary creatures at the bottom of the island," such as prawn-like creatures the size of small dogs that were caught in nets.
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Chiva-Som's two restaurants – Emerald Room and Taste of Siam – use a mix of Thai and Western influences to cook up low-calorie versions of dishes such as prawn salad and coconut curry, that are a feast for the eyes and mouth.
Asia's Top Spas Nellie S. Huang 2010
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The obvious metaphor is there, made even moreso, when the South African government of this near-future's present decides to re-locate the one million-plus "prawn" population to a decidedly smaller, more isolated camp -- in tandem with MNU, a corporation running the alien ghetto while secretly trying to tap them for their technology and biology.
Brad Balfour: Q&A: Sci-Fi Director Neill Blomkamp Describes Life in District 9 As No Picnic 2009
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