shrimp

Meanings

Noun

• Any of many swimming, often edible, crustaceans, chiefly of the infraorder Caridea or the suborder Dendrobranchiata, with slender legs, long whiskers and a long abdomen.
• The flesh of such crustaceans.
• A small, puny or unimportant person.

Verb

• To fish for shrimp.
• To contract; to shrink.

Origin

• From Middle English schrimpe, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaz (compare Middle High German schrimpf, Norwegian skramp ("thin horse, thin man")), from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną (compare Old English sċrimman and scrimp, Middle High German schrimpfen, Swedish skrympa), from Proto-Indo-European *skremb- (compare Lithuanian skrembti, and possibly Albanian shkrumb).