Word.ws English Dictionary

soft-shell crab

soft-shell crab noun: a crab, especially the blue crab, that has recently molted and whose new exoskeleton has not yet hardened, rendering the entire animal soft and edible.

Noun

soft-shell crab (plural soft-shell crabs)

  1. A crab, especially the blue crab, that has recently molted and whose new exoskeleton has not yet hardened, rendering the entire animal soft and edible.
    • 'Soft-shell crabs with tartare sauce, flat beef Hamburgers, medium-rare, from the charcoal grill, french-fried potatoes, broccoli, mixed salad with thousand-island dressing, ice-cream with melted butterscotch and as good a Liebfraumilch as you can get in America. Okay?'1954, Ian Fleming, “The Red Carpet”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 9

Synonyms of soft-shell crab

Forms of soft-shell crab

pluralsoft-shell crabs

Questions about soft-shell crab

What does soft-shell crab mean?
Soft-shell crab means a crab, especially the blue crab, that has recently molted and whose new exoskeleton has not yet hardened, rendering the entire animal soft and edible.
What part of speech is soft-shell crab?
Soft-shell crab is a noun.
What is the plural of soft-shell crab?
The plural of soft-shell crab is soft-shell crabs.

Words near soft-shell crab in the dictionary

  1. soft-sectored
  2. soft-sell
  3. soft-sells
  4. soft-served
  5. soft-shell
  6. soft-shell crab
  7. soft-shell crabs
  8. soft-shell turtle
  9. soft-shell turtles
  10. soft-shelled crab
  11. soft-shelled crabs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: soft-shell crab (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.

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