yabbies

Noun

yabby (plural yabbies)

1. (Australia) Any of various freshwater crayfish, typically of the genus Cherax, valued as food, especially Cherax destructor of southeastern Australia.
   • Having arrived at night I can speak with some authority on the desolate feeling the road produces: the white fire-scarred trunks, the unsettling vision of yabbies moving from one side of the road to the other.1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 386

   Synonyms:

   crawbob

2. (Australia, chiefly Queensland) A species of marine ghost shrimp, Trypaea australiensis, widely harvested by recreational anglers as bait; a nipper.
   • Callianassa australiensis is known in southern New South Wales as the "ghost-nipper" (Dakin, Bennett and Pope, 1952), and in northern New South Wales and Queensland as the "yabby" (a word of aboriginal origin also applied to freshwater crayfish).1961, T. S. Hailstone, W. Stephenson, “The Biology of Callianassa (Trypaea) australiensis Dana 1852 (Crustacea, Thalassinidea)”, in University of Queensland Papers: Department of Zoology, volume I...

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