Crabling

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A small, young, or baby crab.

    "The juvenile members of most of our seaside communities are much given to crab-fishing, and may be seen from early morn to evening late, dangling their legs over some convenient rock, sea-wall, or landing-steps, and with a piece of twine to which a dainty morsel of fish offal has been tied, doing their best to induce some greedy young crabling to grasp it with his nippers, [...]"

Example

More examples

"The juvenile members of most of our seaside communities are much given to crab-fishing, and may be seen from early morn to evening late, dangling their legs over some convenient rock, sea-wall, or landing-steps, and with a piece of twine to which a dainty morsel of fish offal has been tied, doing their best to induce some greedy young crabling to grasp it with his nippers, [...]"

Etymology

From crab + -ling.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.