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Crab   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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books



... under the shadow of the rocks; and as he faced round to recross the moonlit causeway, he saw coming along it that which, by some mysterious instinct, prompted him to keep his place. After all, no mystery about it; for in the diminutive, crab-like form seen approaching, he recognised the dwarf-hunchback who had shared the box seat with him on that ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... mystic individual muttered incantations over it, and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" He gave them parched corn and ground-nuts to be eaten as internal safeguards on the day before the outbreak, and a consecrated cullah, or crab's claw, to be carried in the mouth by each, as an amulet. These rather questionable means secured him a power which was very unquestionable; the witnesses examined in his presence all showed dread of his conjurations, and referred to him indirectly, with a kind of awe, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... mussel, winkle, and shore-crab shells, and the backbone of what had been a stranded fish, close to the mouth of the hole, showed the rat's account-book to date; but there was a line to be drawn even in this trade. That dawn—if you could call the gray dark of a snowstorm dawn—he, wondrously adventurous, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... shop—if there is a barber shop in connection—or else you mumble something about being in a hurry and coming back again, and retreat with all the grace and ease that would be shown by a hard shell crab that was trying to back into the mouth of a milk-bottle. You are likely to do this several times; but finally some day you stick. You slump down into one of those little chairs and offer your hands or one of them to a calm and slightly arrogant looking young lady ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... the merry wenches? Could she not guide the house, and rule the maids, and get in the stores, and hinder waste, and make the pasties, and brew the possets? Had her father found the crust hard, or missed his roasted crab, or had any one blamed her for want of discretion? Nay, as to that, she was like to be more discreet as she was, with only her good old father to please, than with a husband ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... way through the liquid waste; Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sidelong soldier-crab; And some on the jellied quarl, that flings At once a thousand streamy stings— They cut the wave with the living oar And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The footsteps ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... coriaceous, entire, 3-nerved, 2 thorny stipules, one of them crooked. Flowers small, greenish, axillary. Calyx, 5 oval divisions. Corolla, 5 petals. Stamens 5, free. Ovary bilocular, situated on the disc. Styles 2-3, divergent; small papillary stigmas. Drupe pulpy, globose, resembling a crab-apple in size and taste, enclosing ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... line of the vast city stretching as far as the eye could reach; with its flat-top, square-sided, boxlike buildings, with here and there a structure taller than the others; the flash of light from Trinity's spire, its cross aflame; the awkward, crab-like movements of innumerable ferry-boats, their gaping alligator mouths filled with human flies; the impudent, nervous little tugs, spitting steam in every passing face; the long strings of sausage-linked canalers kept together by grunting, slow-moving tows; the great floating track-yards ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... forum, or market-place, is the tomb (as I conjecture by the footsteps of some letters now remaining) of Apicius, that famous Roman, not very beautiful, but antique. It is engraved upon the shell of a sea-crab; and it might happen, notwithstanding what Seneca says, that this famous epicure, after having sought for larger shell-fish than the coast of Gallia could supply him with, and then going in vain to Africa to make a farther inquiry, might hear some rumour concerning ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... perfects himself in such graces as the putting on of a girl’s overshoes. She took the damp bit of rubber—a wet overshoe, even if small and hallowed by associations, isn’t pretty—as Venus might have received a soft-shell crab from the hand of a fresh young merman. I was between her and the steps to which her ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... believe; but I don't remember any of them. My mother wrote, offering me Dora for a companion; but somehow I preferred being without her. One great comfort was good news about Connie, who was getting on famously. But even this moved me so little that I began to think I was turning into a crab, utterly incased in the shell of my own selfishness. The thought made me cry. The fact that I could cry consoled me, for how could I be heartless so long as I could cry? But then came the thought it was for myself, my own hard-heartedness I was crying,—not certainly for joy that Connie ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... influences. Hence astrologers professed to predict the fate of a person from the position of the planets at the time of his birth. Astrological rules were also drawn from the signs of the zodiac. A child born under the sign of the Lion will be courageous; one born under the Crab will not go forward well in life; one born under the Waterman will probably be drowned, and so forth. Such fancies seem absurd enough, but in the Middle Ages educated ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... metaphysical school. His works are gigantic in size and appear formidable. But if one be not afraid of giants and venture to approach near, one finds nothing but a big Morgante, full of the most commonplace prejudices, quite easily killed with the bite of a crab! ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... one close by our beds. We always sleep upon the ground-floor on matting. He was dozing in the night, after his Ramadan midnight meal, when the monster scrambled past by his head like an enormous crab. In the morning he showed me his sting as a trophy of victory. We then examined all the walls in our sleeping apartment, and stopped up cracks and crevices. After a short time the scorpions were forgotten, or we got used to them; and the next one that Said had a chase after, excited in ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... The piers, arches, reeds and columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transitional plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other shell motifs - kelp and its analogy to prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the imperial's court. I think Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity; yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... snail-plate armor snatched in haste, They speed their way through the liquid waste. Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sideling soldier-crab, And some on the jellied quarl that flings At once a thousand streamy stings. They cut the wave with the living oar, And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... shot up into the clouds to seize the cormorant. The latter dropped, flew into a valley and dove beneath the waters of a brook in the guise of a fish. When Yang Oerlang reached the edge of the valley, and had lost his trail he said to himself: "This ape has surely turned himself into a fish or a crab! I will change my form as well in order to catch him." So he turned into a fish-hawk and floated above the surface of the water. When the ape in the water caught sight of the fish-hawk, he saw that he was Yang Oerlang. He swiftly swung around and fled, Yang Oerlang in pursuit. When the latter was ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... face appeared a moment later, emerging like the face of a hermit-crab from its shell. The frown slowly faded, and the deep, unwashed wrinkles took ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... Nothing," seeing the very nature of the play is expressed in its name, is it not likely that Shakspere named the two constables, Dogberry (a poisonous berry) and Verjuice (the juice of crab-apples); those names having absolutely nothing to do with the stupid innocuousness of their characters, and so corresponding to their way of turning things upside down, and saying the very opposite of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... suffers. In this manner much bhull crop was destroyed in the monsoons of 1851 and 1852, during the heavy gales which prevailed in those seasons. The rice is subject to attacks also of a small black sea crab, called by the natives Kookaee, and which, without any apparent cause, cuts down the growing grain in large quantities, and often occasions ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... named—beauty and purity. The figure teaches us that ugly Christianity is not Christ's Christianity. Some of us older people remember that it used to be a favourite phrase to describe unattractive saints that they had 'grace grafted on a crab stick.' There are a great many Christian people whom one would compare to any other plant rather than a lily. Thorns and thistles and briers are a good deal more like what some of them appear to the world. But we are bound, if we are Christian people, by our obligations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... were hung with the green flowers which, though they depend in their season from so many trees, as the oak, are perhaps rarely observed. The elder-bushes in full white bloom scented the air for yards around both by night and day; the white bloom shows on the darkest evening. Besides several crab-stoles—the buds of the crab might be mistaken for thorns growing pointed at the extreme end of the twigs—there was a large crab tree, which bore a plentiful crop. The lads sharpen their knives by drawing the blade slowly to and fro through a crab-apple; the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that knows ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... agony or intense gratification—he couldn't make up his mind which. After nightfall if he flung a burning cigar stump out upon the sand he could see it moving off in the darkness apparently under its own motive power. But the truth was that a land crab, with an unsolvable mania for playing the role of torchbearer, would be scuttling away with the stub ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Master Crab. Squirt thy verjuice, when thou art roasting, some other way. I wonder what man-ape thy mother watch'd i' the breeding. She had been special fond o' children, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... aid his friend, began to fall on. Him RALPH encounter'd, and straight grew A dismal combat 'twixt them two: Th' one arm'd with metal, th' other with wood; 830 This fit for bruise, and that for blood. With many a stiff thwack, many a bang, Hard crab-tree and old iron rang; While none that saw them cou'd divine To which side conquest would incline, 835 Until MAGNANO, who did envy That two should with so many men vie, By subtle stratagem of brain, Perform'd what force could ne'er attain; For he, by ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... the youngest hollowed out beds in the sand with their hoofs or went to fetch coverings; instead of luzern, they had no food but crabs, which they caught on the strand and even in the sea; so that Theorus causes a Corinthian[81] crab to say, "'Tis a cruel fate, oh Posidon! neither my deep hiding-places, whether on land or at sea, can help me to ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... better to come for a visit when the spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... her also what he had best do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and he told her. Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without any mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous Crab-tree Cudgel, and goes down into the Dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they gave him never a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort, that they were ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... Mr. Skip and old Crab were in very good time; there were not more than half assembled of all the good company asked and expected this afternoon. These were all over, in the house and out of the house; observing and speculating. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... Drusilla, as you call her," said Mrs. Reynolds, "and take her some of my crab jelly. I've seen her many's the time sitting out in the yard with naught but a trained maid by her. Poor, poor old soul, with a ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... Lichtenthal quarter of the city of Vienna, in the vicinity of the fortifications, there still stands an old house. It is evidently a public house, for there hangs the sign—"At the Red Crab." Beside this there is a marble tablet fastened above the doorway, which says that Franz Schubert was born in this house. At the right of his name is placed a lyre crowned with a star, and at the left a laurel wreath within which is placed the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... June, Bishop Creek. On examining the water holes, I find there are small crab fish in them, which leads me to think this water is permanent. This morning we again hear the voices of the natives up the creek to the west. There must be plenty more water up there, as most of the birds go in that direction to drink, passing by this water. The ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... sphinx-like than ever. Her one bright spot at the Villa Camellia was her devotion to her buddy. Half a dozen other girls had at various periods tried to "take Lorna up," but all had promptly dropped her, declaring that they could not get any further, and that she was a solitary "hermit-crab." Irene, after one or two ventures, realized that Lorna was utterly reserved and uncommunicative, but was content to continue the friendship on a one-sided basis, giving confidences, but receiving none in return. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i' the mesh, And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship — the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... ranked Rossini above Wagner, Arthur Schopenhauer said some notable things about music. "Art is ever on the quest," is a wise observation of his, "a quest, and a divine adventure"; though this restless search for the new often ends in plain reaction, progress may be crab-wise and still be progress. I fear that "progress" as usually understood is a glittering "general idea" that blinds us to the truth. Reform in art is not like reform in politics; you can't reform the St. Matthew Passion or the Fifth Symphony. Is Parsifal a reformation of Gluck? This talk of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... glistening in the light of the morning sun, elicited a simultaneous burst of admiration from our travelers. Then the prospective pleasures of the rural visit were discussed, the family and friendly reunions, the dinner parties, the fish feasts upon the river's banks, the oyster excursions and crab expeditions; and in such pleasant anticipations the cheerful hours of that delightful forenoon slipped away; and when, at last, the heat of the sun grew oppressive, and our sharpened appetites reminded us of the dinner-basket, we began to cast around for a cool, dry and shady spot on which ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... Among the illustrations that have been adduced of the insensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more extraordinary than this: "A crab will continue to eat, and apparently relish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger one!"—(Transactions of Victoria Institute, ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... sulphurous associations of modern warfare that might be suggested by the name of devil-fish. No: the antagonist wore a coat-of-mail and arms of proof, as became a good knight of the sea, and was besides succulent, digestible—a veritable prize for the conqueror. It was a monstrous crab. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... such shell fish can be procured alive in the markets, the use of a good brand of any of them canned is recommended. In fact, canned lobster, crab, and shrimp are very satisfactory and may be substituted for any of the fresh cooked varieties in the recipes that follow. It is true that some persons object to canned food because ptomaine poisoning sometimes results, but ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... they seldom went outside that narrow domain. Durrington, which was little more than ten miles away, was only a name to them. Many of them had not been as far as Leyland for months. They spent their days catching eels in the marsh canals, or in setting lobster and crab traps outside the breakwater. The agricultural labourers tilled the same patch of ground year after year. They had no recreations except an occasional night at the inn; their existence was a lifelong struggle ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... by lightning, or being shot through the back part of the brain; of both which I have seen instances. I had once an opportunity of inspecting two oxen, a few minutes after they were killed by lightning under a crab-tree on moist ground in long grass; and observed, that they could not have struggled, as the grass was not pressed or bent near them; I have also seen two horses shot through the cerebellum, who never ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... said Jerry; "you don't understand. There's more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn't get on to this crab salad business when you ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... methinks, is to be seen On earth that does not overween. Doth not the hawk, from high, survey The fowls as destined for his prey? And do not Caesars, and such things, Deem men were born to slave for kings? The crab, amidst the golden sands Of Tagus, or on pearl-strewn strands, Or in the coral-grove marine, Thinks hers each gem of ray serene. The snail, 'midst bordering pinks and roses, Where zephyrs fly and love reposes, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... had expended a large fortune, summoned his heir to his death-bed, and told him that he had a secret of great importance to impart to him, which might be some compensation for the injury he had done him. The secret was that crab sauce was ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had been in a month ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... that did not find its votaries. Strange to say, another foreign product, imported from a neighbouring country famous for its barrenness, counted the most; and the fruit faction which chiefly frightened the Vraibleusian Government was an acid set, who crammed themselves with Crab-apples. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... is nothing like hawthorn; it will trim into a thick hedge, defending the enclosure from trespassers, and warding off the bitter winds; or it will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab—the common, despised crab-apple—in spring is covered with blossom, such a mass of blossom that it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever see a plane or a laurel ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... IV. of the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits before this book is published. Here again I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly so called because ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... Rahere. "I am the sole fool that might do it, Brother, unless"—he pointed at De Aquila, whom he had only met that day—"yonder tough Norman crab kept me company. But, Sir Hugh, I did not mean to shame him. He hath been somewhat punished through, maybe, little fault of ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... have its end. I have had to parry several presents of busts, and so forth. The funny thing was the airs of my little friend. We had a most affectionate parting—wet, wet cheeks on the lady's side.[395] The pebble-hearted cur shed as few tears as Crab ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... borrow money, nor twist your kittens neck off, or disturb a congregation, &c.— your business is done. I know things (thoughts or things, thoughts are things) of myself which would make every friend I have fly me as a plague patient. I once * * *, and set a dog upon a crab's leg that was shoved out under a moss of sea weeds, a pretty little feeler.—Oh! pah! how sick I am of that; and a lie, a mean one, I once told!— I stink ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... upon its surface. Some were rock-plants, that had been swept off the cliffs by the waves; some were fresh-water plants; and others, recently torn from their roots, were still full of sap. One of them carried a live crab,—a little sailor afloat on a tuft of grass. These plants and living things could not have passed many days in the water without fading and dying. And all encouraged the sailors to believe ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... search, armed with our knives and wooden swords. No oysters were to be found on the rocks, or in the shoal water in which we waded. However, we obtained as many mussels and some other shell-fish as we could carry in our pockets; and Ben captured a large crab, which was a prize, we agreed, worth having. And as by this time the tide was running in, we were now obliged ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston

... the rippling lake the wild swan flaps her wing. Out in the lignum swamps once more frogs croak and crickets sing. Once more the wild fowl, sporting midst the crab-holes, may be seen, For prosperity is hovering ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... Campbell up in front of him now in real professional style. As soon as he heard us he threw up his arms and splashed a bit—I reckoned he was trying to put as much style as he could into that rescue. But I caught a crab, and, before we could get to them, they were washed past into the top of a tree that stood well below flood-mark. I pulled the boat's head round and let her stern down between the branches. Bogan had one arm over a limb and was holding Campbell with the other, and trying to lift him ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... his grip on the gun. A snake, probably, had disturbed the bird. Or some of those devilish little crimson bansis, half insect, half crab.... ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... et monsieur," he said pleasantly, grabbing a vicious crab by its flippers, and smiling at its wild attempts to bite. "You see I am busy, but make ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... delicious omelet. Bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, rice, riced potatoes, or left-over cereal may be used, as well as mushrooms, chopped or whole, and oysters raw or previously scalloped or fried and then chopped. Bits of fish, such as left-over crab or lobster, will do nicely for increasing variety. Often jelly, jam, and fruit or vegetables are folded inside after the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming of David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves I have imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will rob the shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a Hebrew. Yea, if I can make it ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... hamlet of Hindon,' said Reuben. 'Oh, the heat of this steel coat! I wonder if it were very un-soldierly to slip it off and tie it about Dido's neck. I shall be baked alive else, like a crab in its shell. How say you, illustrious, is it contravened by any of those thirty-nine articles of war which you bear about ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... afternoon, and a big, beautiful one in the parlor, which looked very pleasant with the lamp lit and Clover's geraniums and china roses in the window. The tea- table was set with the best linen and the pink-and-white china. Debby's muffins were very light. The crab-apple jelly came out of its mould clear and whole, and the cold chicken looked appetizing, with its green wreath of parsley. There was stewed potato, too, and, of course, oysters. Everybody in Burnet had oysters for tea when company was expected. They ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... a la Marechale Toasted Angels Oyster Pates Scalloped Clams Shrimp or Oyster Curry Shrimps a la Bordelaise Shrimps with Tomato Saute of Shrimps Crab a la Creole Sole a la Normandie Filet of Sole a la Bohemian Baked Sole Flounders a la Magouze Salmon a la Melville Stewed Haddock Bacalas a la Viscaina Baked Sardines Sardines with Cheese Scalloped Fish Roe ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden

... to say, so I smiled and bobbed my head and walked out still looking at him and smiling, which made it necessary for me to walk sideways, and thus made me look, I suppose, somewhat like a crab. ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness

... expense of corn and fodder. The waste of those articles in the South, through shameful carelessness and neglect, is immense; as food for stock, they are most expensive articles. Oats, millet, peas (vine and all), broadcast corn, Bermuda and crab-grass hay, are all much cheaper and equally good. Any one of these crops, fed whilst green—the oats and millet as they begin to shoot, the peas to blossom, and the corn when tasseling—with a feed of dry oats, corn, or corn-chop at noon, will keep a plow-team in fine order ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... up, and trying to make me walk two ways at once, like a crab: very good fun for a crab, but it brought me flat, as you see, and has nearly frightened out of my head a fine story I have heard, about the consequences of an odd speech your friend Harry, the little old gentleman in the story of Lillie, made to ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... hunters, or they never could have got so near. Now they were opposite the family group and needed only a chance for a fair shot. Sneaking forward with the utmost caution, they were surely within twenty-five yards, but still the bushes screened the crab-eaters. As the hunters sneaked, the old bear stopped and sniffed suspiciously; the wind changed, she got an unmistakable whiff; then gave a loud warning "Koff! Koff! Koff! Koff!" and ran as fast as she could. The hunters knowing they were discovered rushed out, yelling as loudly as possible, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... alone. It must mean empty spaces round him, and they are just what make him obvious. Have you never seen one ploughman from the heights, or one shepherd from the valleys? Have you never walked along a cliff, and seen one man walking along the sands? Didn't you know when he's killed a crab, and wouldn't you have known if it had been a creditor? No! No! No! For an intelligent murderer, such as you or I might be, it is an impossible plan to make sure that nobody is looking ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... were scuttling about the floor, having got through the wires of the cage. A third was clinging to the top of the cage, evidently in terror of his life, for below appeared a sad yet funny sight. The big crab had wedged himself into the little recess where Polly's cup used to stand, and there he sat eating one of his relations in the coolest way. All the claws of the poor victim were pulled off, and he was ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... garden?" asked George. "The boys down at the dock say they can make lots of money selling soft crabs. They get from sixty to seventy-five cents a dozen, and, oh, mother, if Bert and me could only have a net and a boat and a crab car, and roll up our pants like Nat Springer, we'd just bring you so much money that you needn't hardly sew at all!" and in his enthusiasm George's eyes sparkled, and he ruthlessly trampled upon every rule of grammar ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... very first official thing I did, in my administration—and it was on the very first day of it, too—was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "I think after all I'll try one of those crab patties. Or you might tell the waiter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various

... A dead horseshoe crab on the sands deflected the course of the racing children, except Derry, who pursued his panting way, and as Rachael sat down on the log, cast himself, radiant and breathless, into her arms. She caught the child to her heart passionately. He had always been closer ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... he called to the innkeeper in a loud imperious voice. "Throw open your apartments, and make ready for our entertainment. Give us wine, tokay, and menes; give us also pheasants, artichokes, and crab salad." ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... silences of brooding woods, Centurial shadows, cloisters of the elk:, Yet here was sense of undefined regret, Irreparable loss, uncertain what: Was all this grandeur but anachronism, A shell divorced of its informing life, Where the priest housed him like a hermit-crab, An alien to that faith of elder days That gathered round it this fair shape of stone? 330 Is old Religion but a spectre now, Haunting the solitude of darkened minds, Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day? Is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... gates are carbuncles, or pearls; nor one Of all her borders but's a precious stone; None common, nor o' th' baser sort are here, Nor rough, but squar'd and polish'd everywhere; Her beams are cedars, fir her rafters be, Her terraces are of the algum-tree; The thorn or crab-tree here are not of us; Who thinks them here utensils, puts abuse Upon the place, yea, on the builder too; Would they be thus controll'd in what they do? With carved-work of lily, and palm-tree, With cherubims and chains ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... names to diseases is a familiar phenomenon, e.g., cancer (and canker), crab, and lupus, wolf. To this class belongs mulligrubs, for which we find in the 17th century also mouldy grubs. Its oldest meaning is stomach-ache, still given in Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1864). Mully is still used in dialect ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... of shell and scale fish. The best were the langoustes (Palinurus vulgaris), the clawless lobsters called crawfish (crayfish) in the United States, and the agosta or avagosta of the Adriatic: it was confounded by the Egyptian officers with "Ab Galambo,"[EN103] the crab (Cancer pelagicus). The echinidae of various species, large-spined and small-spined, the latter white as well as dull-red, were preserved in spirits.[EN104] Amongst the excellent fish, the Marjn (a Scina) ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... hermit crab has taken possession of a sea snail's shell, and set up housekeeping; with body partly hidden he waves his long bony tentacles, while his beady eyes stare at us from the ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... not likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together now and ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... rations. This custom is in contradiction to the feeding of the body through a tube, and proves that quite contradictory customs can exist simultaneously, without the natives noticing it. Half-way up the volcano sits a monster with two immense shears, like a crab. If no pigs have been sacrificed for the soul by the fifth day, the poor soul is alone and the monster swallows it; but if the sacrifice has been performed, the souls of the sacrificed pigs follow after the human soul, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... event occurred to add to our perplexities. The kelp around the vessel suddenly became alive with a small species of black crab. These creatures must have scented the food from our vessel, and they came in millions to besiege us in order to devour it. The deck was soon black with them, and they swarmed below in ever-increasing numbers. Nothing escaped them, and most of our provisions were ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... I found that it was a great crab-spider, one of the formidable arachnida, which are said to eat young birds and other small vertebrates, though they generally, like other spiders, live upon insects. This spider—the mygagle avicularia—will attack humming-birds, and, indeed, other small specimens of the feathered ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... old hunks, but it suited his humour to refer to himself constantly as "a poor farming bodie." And he dressed in accordance with his humour. His clean old crab-apple face was always grinning at you from over a white-sleeved moleskin waistcoat, as if he had been no better than a ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... servants, an old woman named Affery, and Flintwinch, her husband, a short, bald man, who was both clerk and footman, and who carried his head awry and walked in a one-sided crab-like way, as though he were falling and needed propping up like the house. Flintwinch was cunning and without conscience. Very few secrets his mistress had which he did not know, and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... the end of these words, "Sperent in te" was heard from above us, to which all the carols made answer. Then among them a light became so bright that, if the Crab had one such crystal, winter would have a month of one sole day.[1] And as a glad maiden rises and goes and enters in the dance, only to do honor to the new bride, and not for any fault,[2] so saw I the brightened splendor come to the two who were turning in a wheel, such as was befitting ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... have lost their disused eyes but not the disused eye-stalks appear to illustrate the effects of natural selection rather than of disuse. The loss of the exposed, sensitive, and worse-than-useless eye, would be a decided gain, while the disused eye-stalk, being no particular detriment to the crab, would be but slightly affected by natural selection, though open to the cumulative effects of disuse. The disused but better protected eyes of the blind cave-rat are still "of large size" (Origin of ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... transport in the harbour; the stuffy, ill-smelling breath of the hold, when the wind was wrong; the march along the coast and the grewsome life over and around him—buzzard and strange bird in the air, and crab and snail and lizard and scorpion and hairy tarantula scuttling through the tropical green rushes along the path. And the hunger and thirst and heat and dirt and rolling sweat of the last day's march and every detail of the day's fight; the ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... meaning in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole lot better than ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... write any story about this," admonished Frank. "The wonderful phenomenon you see before you, my friend, is not a horse at all. It is merely a crab shell from which the ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... primary grades. Simple Aesopic fables in prose seem best for the first two grades. More complex forms might be chosen for the third grade, for example, "The Story of Alnaschar," "The Good Samaritan," "The Discontented Pendulum," "The Musical Ass," "The Swan, the Pike, and the Crab," and "The Hen with ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... perch, and clinging to it as he drew in his line was a large, hard-shelled, long-clawed crab. Tom put the crab in the basket, knowing well what delicious white meat was in ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... gained on Fred, who continued to breast the water with all the strength at his command. Terry was hopeful, and now that he was fully roused, he did not waste his strength in shouting to his companion. As he advanced in his crab-like fashion, he frequently flirted his face around so as to look in front, and thus to ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... around and opened and shut her umbrella for a long time—a month, or a year, perhaps—we don't know how long. Then, one morning, down among the sea-weeds, she laid a whole lot of tiny eggs, transparent as crab-apple jelly and much smaller than a dew-drop on the end of a pine-leaf. Now she leaves the scene, and our story henceforth concerns only ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... rivers may well bee permitted. Moreover smelts, soales, dabs, whitings, sturbuts, gurnets, and all such other, as are well knowne not to be ill, or unwholesome to feed on. All which may be altered with mint, hyssope, anise, &c. Also cre-fishes, crab-fish, lobsters, and the like, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... know, Avdotya Romanovna, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!" he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Avdotya Romanovna couldn't help laughing when ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... dear self"— and she smiled graciously and lowered her voice as if what she was about to tell was in the strictest confidence—"was a shrivelled-up old prince who once called on my father and myself in Vienna. He was as ugly as a crab, and walked with a limp. There had been some words over a card-table, he told me, and the other man fired first. I was a young girl then, but I have never forgotten him to this day. Indeed, my dear ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the fable of the crab and his children? The crab was sore distressed to see his little ones run crookedly on the sand of the sea shore, so he said, "My sons, walk straight!" "Yes," answered the little crabs, "lead thou the way, father, and ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... adventurer, the player of the confidence trick or the three-card trick, the robber of the widow and the orphan. Be smooth-tongued, and the Englishman will withdraw from you as quickly as may be, walking sideways like a crab, and looking askance at you with panic in his eyes. But stammer and blurt to him, and he will fall straight under the spell of your transparent honesty. A silly superstition; but there it is, ineradicable; and through ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... a little while. Then the other boat shifted about; they had not caught a single crab, and there were loud murmurs of discontent. The others had ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... with black mud, which made each shoe leave a scarlike impression. Overhead elevated trains with a shrill grinding of the wheels stopped at the station, which upon its leglike pillars seemed to resemble some monstrous kind of crab squatting over the street. The quick fat puffings of the engines could be heard. Down an alley there were somber curtains of purple and black, on which street lamps ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... infested with perennials at the time of sowing. The former may be prevented from seeding by clipping back frequently, while the latter remain in the soil, increase from year to year, and injure the plants by crowding. Where crab grass grows abundantly, as in some parts of the South, unless the alfalfa is sown and cultivated, spring sowing ought to be avoided. But it is less objectionable to sow alfalfa on land that is weedy when the adaptation of the land for the crop is high ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... a can of crabs, bread crumbs or pounded crackers. Pepper and salt the whole to taste; mince some cold ham; have the baking pan well buttered, place therein first a layer of the crab meat, prepared as above, then a layer of the minced ham, and so on, alternately until the pan is filled. Cover the top with bread crumbs and ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... Excellency's return to the camp, the miners busily employed themselves in laying down slabs to facilitate his progress. I was among the zealous ones who improvised this shabby foot-path. What a lack! we were all of us as cheerful as fighting-cocks.—A crab-hole being in the way, our Big-Larry actually pounced on Lady Hotham, and lifting her up in his arms, eloped with her ladyship safely across, amid hearty peals of laughter, however colonial they may have ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello



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