crab:
(plural: ‘crabs‘; pronunciation: the letter ‘c’ in this word is said with a ‘k’ sound)
a bad tempered, quarrelsome, irritable and continually complaining person,
a crab bothering a lady
e.g.
Danny, our new supervisor, is a crab; he doesn’t know how to improve his skills and he doesn’t like others showing their skills.
Though the building is in a good locality and the rent is very reasonable, no tenant stays for more than three months in that building because the landlady is a terrible crab; she gets into arguments with the tenants for no good reason!
There are different kinds of crabs in people as there are in the real (shellfish) crabs out there in the waters: political crabs, office crabs, jealous crabs, stupid crabs, etc.
For an interesting and informative article on people’s ‘crab mentality’, please click here, for an eye-opening article on office crabs, please click here, for an article on a blog which has ‘crab’ used to refer to a person (baby), please click here, and for an article/news item that talks about political crabs, please click here.
A more common meaning is a type of sea animal.
Return to “crab” in Animals in Language.
