prawn

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English

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Prawns

Etymology 1

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.

(woman with toned body but unattractive face): From the idea of discarding the head of a prawn before eating it.

Pronunciation

Noun

prawn (countable and uncountable, plural prawn or prawns)

  1. A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.
  2. (Commonwealth) A crustacean, sometimes confused with shrimp.
  3. (Australia, colloquial, derogatory) Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face.
    She's a prawn!
  4. (Australia, slang) A fool, an idiot.
    • 1999 August 2, Les Brown, “This old "almah" controversy”, in alt.religion.christian‎ (Usenet):
      This is utter dribble. I've not read much worse than this in a long time - and he admits he doesn't know - "or so I am told". Get real, you prawn.
    • 2001 February 1, Ned Latham, “Lovesick Puppy Poetry - Volume 1”, in aus.culture.true-blue‎ (Usenet):
      He didn't say he was accused of that, prawn.
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

prawn (third-person singular simple present prawns, present participle prawning, simple past and past participle prawned)

  1. (intransitive) To fish for prawns.

Etymology 2

Alternative spelling of pron (pronounced identically with cot-caught merger), which in turn is a corrupted spelling of porn.

Noun

prawn (plural prawns)

  1. Alternative form of porn.

References

  • Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
  • Århammar, Nils (1986): Aspects of Language: Geolinguistics
  1. ^ Joseph Wright, editor (1903), “PRANKLE”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: , volumes IV (M–Q), London: Henry Frowde, , publisher to the English Dialect Society, ; New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 OUPblog
  3. ^ “prawn”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
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