CRAB

Wild Word Friday!

All the meanings of the word CRAB – a shellfish with pincers, a louse, an unpleasant and sour person – all come to us along various routes from the same Indo-European wordbase gerbh-, which means to scratch.  At first that may seem like a strange meaning to have spawned all those various nouns, but when you watch a CRAB (shellfish) “walk” it is a scratching kind of locomotion, and a sour, unpleasant person is often one who scratches at us with words and selfish actions.

A kindred word to CRAB and another descendant of the Indo-European gerbh- is of Old Norse derivation – scrapa, which means a sour wild apple. Yep. A CRAB apple. 

What an interesting little word CRAB turns out to be, small but mighty, enriching our English language with multiple meanings!

Have you ever made CRAB apple jelly? It’s my husband’s favorite. What’s your favorite kind of jelly?

Blessings!

Sue

(Some information from WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE. Photographs from Wikipedia.)