lobster

Plurallobsters

Formslobsters, lobstering, lobstered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A hard-shelled marine crustacean of the family Nephropidae with large claws, dark green or blue-black turning bright red when cooked, eaten as seafood.

   Fishermen hauled a heavy lobster from the trap before dawn.

   A boiled lobster shifts from blue-black to brilliant red on the plate.

   Note

   The name is Old English, loppestre, and its origin is uncertain. One suggestion makes it a garbled Latin locusta, "grasshopper, locust," fitted with the Old English feminine agent ending -estre. If so, a sea creature was named after a land insect. The animal is countable (three lobsters in the trap), but the meat on the plate is uncountable (a salad of lobster).

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A hard, spiny-shelled crustacean of the family Palinuridae that lacks claws and is pinkish red, eaten as seafood; also called the rock lobster.

   The fishmonger said this lobster, unlike the Maine kind, has no claws to crack.

   Grilled tails from a freshly caught lobster are a delicacy where the clawless, spiny variety thrives.

   Similarcrayfish

   Note

   Here the name stretches beyond the true lobsters to crustaceans that only resemble them, and the spiny lobster is the best known of these. It has no claws, so its meat is in the tail. In markets it often goes by rock lobster or langouste. When precision matters, keep the qualifier, because plain lobster can just as well mean the clawed true lobster.

3. 3
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To fish for lobsters, typically using baited traps set on the sea floor.

   Local crews lobster these waters from spring through fall.

   He taught his son to lobster from a small wooden boat.

4. 4
   adjective

   Bright red in color, especially skin reddened by sunburn.

   By evening his back was lobster from the relentless midday sun.

   She flushed lobster with embarrassment at the sudden attention.

   Similarred, scarlet, crimson, sunburned

   Oppositepale

   Note

   The color word borrows from the kitchen, not the sea: the true lobster is dark until it is cooked, and only then turns the bright red this adjective means. It grew from the simile red as a lobster and still behaves like a noun pressed into service. It compares with more lobster and most lobster, never lobsterer, and it sits most easily after verbs of change such as go, turn or flush.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A flattened, hard-shelled crustacean of the family Scyllaridae that resembles a lobster, with broad plate-like antennae; called the slipper lobster.

   Cooks in some regions prize the small, flattened lobster for its sweet tail meat.

   The net brought up a clawless lobster with broad, plate-like antennae.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A small, flattened crustacean that resembles a lobster, with a long tail usually tucked beneath the body.

   Deep-sea cameras often catch the small lobster clinging to cold-water coral.

   A lobster no longer than a thumb darted between the rocks, tail folded under.

   Note

   The name misleads more here than anywhere else in the family. Squat lobsters look the part, with a lobster-like body and the tail folded underneath. Yet they are closer kin to porcelain crabs and hermit crabs than to the true lobster. In careful writing, keep squat attached, since the bare word suggests a relationship the animal does not have.

7. 7
   nounslangcountable

   A twenty-dollar note in Australian currency, nicknamed for its reddish-orange color.

   He tucked a lobster under the windshield wiper as a tip.

   By Friday night his pocket held nothing but a single crumpled lobster.

   Note

   Australian money slang that names a banknote for its color, the same logic that turns a sunburned back lobster red. It belongs to casual talk about cash, such as tips, rounds of drinks and change in a pocket, and would be out of place on an invoice or in a bank. Grammatically it is an ordinary count noun: a lobster, two lobsters.

8. 8
   nounslanghistoricalcountable

   A soldier or officer of the imperial British Army, so named for the red or scarlet uniform.

   Colonial militia traded fire with the lobsters defending the river crossing.

   Each lobster in the column carried a musket and a heavy pack.

   Similarredcoat

   Note

   An insult before it was a nickname, aimed at redcoated troops by the people they policed. Ralph Davol's Two Men of Taunton (1912) shows street crowds shouting "Lobsters" and "Bloody-backs" while flinging snowballs and turnips at Captain Preston's men. It now belongs to historical writing and fiction set in that era. Applied to a modern soldier, it reads as deliberate period color.

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