Word.ws English Dictionary

crab stick

crab stick noun: a cudgel, originally made of the wood of a crabapple tree, hence any similar club.

crab stick: a cudgel, originally made of the wood of a crabapple tree, hence any similar club
Image: Natto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

crab stick (plural crab sticks)

  1. (archaic) A cudgel, originally made of the wood of a crabapple tree, hence any similar club.
    • [O]ne of them who appeared to have the most spirit had a knotted crab-stick in his hand, and insisted that the Irishman should not leave the company, till he had first given satisfaction for the insult he had committed on them all.1792, Thomas Holcroft, Anna St. Ives, vol. VI, letter 106
  2. (obsolete) A crabby, ill-tempered person.

Noun (2)

crab stick (plural crab sticks)

  1. A processed food, made of surimi to somewhat resemble the legs of a crab.
    Synonyms:
    imitation crab stick, crab surimi stick, sea legs

crab stick meaning in Indonesian and Thai

crab stick in Indonesian

processed seafood
stik kepiting

crab stick in Thai

processed seafood
ปูอัด bpuu-àt

Synonyms of crab stick

  • imitation crab stick
  • crab surimi stick
  • sea legs

Forms of crab stick

pluralcrab sticks
alternative formcrab-stick
alternative formcrabstick

Origin of crab stick

From crab (“wild apple”) + stick.

From crab (“crustacean”) + stick.

Questions about crab stick

What does crab stick mean?
Crab stick means a cudgel, originally made of the wood of a crabapple tree, hence any similar club.
What is crab stick in Indonesian?
Crab stick in Indonesian is stik kepiting. See Crab stick meaning in Indonesian.
What part of speech is crab stick?
Crab stick is a noun.
What is the plural of crab stick?
The plural of crab stick is crab sticks.

Words near crab stick in the dictionary

  1. crab rangoon
  2. crab rangoons
  3. crab soccer
  4. crab spider
  5. crab spiders
  6. crab stick
  7. crab sticks
  8. crab tree
  9. crab trees
  10. crab yaws
  11. crab's eye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crab stick (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-crabstick.wav.

Cite this entry: “crab stick.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crab_stick. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.