prawn
/pɹɔːn/ noun, verb
Forms prawns prawning prawned
- noun A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.
- noun (Commonwealth) A crustacean, sometimes confused with shrimp.
- noun (Australia, colloquial, derogatory) Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face. “She's a prawn!”
- noun (Australia, slang) A fool, an idiot.
- verb (intransitive) To fish for prawns.
Synonyms
Etymology
First attested early 1400s as various Middle English forms prayne, prane, praune, and prawne, which present no clear cognates in languages other than English. The forms suggest a hypothetical Old English form *prægn, where *æg would have evolved into Middle English *ay, but it is unclear if the word is of Germanic origin, from another European language, or loaned from a substrate. In the Isle of Wight, a word prankle ("prawn") is recorded and thought to be related. Century, following Skeat, suggested transposition of an unrecorded Old French *parne, *perne related to Spanish perna (“a flat shellfish”), Old Italian perna and diminutive pernochie, parnocchie, glossed as "shrimps or prawne, fishes" by John Florio, but the OED considers Florio's entry incorrect and the suggested connection semantically and phonologically implausible.
Etymology 1, noun sense 3 ("woman with attractive body and unattractive face") is from the idea of discarding the head of a prawn before eating it.
An alternative spelling of pron (pronounced identically with cot-caught merger), which in turn is a corrupted spelling of porn.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any one of numerous species of large shrimplike Crustacea having slender legs and long antennæ. They mostly belong to the genera Pandalus, Palæmon, Palæmonetes, and Peneus, and are much used as food. The common English prawn in Palæmon serratus.
Etymology [OE. prane, of unknown origin; cf. L. perna a sea mussel.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “prawn”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details