Definition
a shellfish that has a long body, eight legs, and two large parts like arms called claws
a. a lobster cooked and eaten as food
Origin and usage
The word lobster has an uncertain origin, but it is believed to come from the Latin word ‘locusta’ meaning ‘grasshopper, locust’. This makes sense given the appearance of lobsters – they do indeed resemble grasshoppers or locusts. In English, the word lobster was originally ‘loppestre’ or ‘lopster’, both referring to the marine shellfish. It’s not clear when the ‘p’ changed to a ‘b’, thus forming the modern word lobster.
Examples
Lobster is a noun that refers to a type of shellfish with long antennae, eight legs and two large claws. They live in every ocean on Earth and prefer to hide in crevices or burrows along the ocean floor.
Lobster is a highly valued type of seafood, and lobster fishing is often a fairly lucrative business in the coastal areas where lobsters commonly live. The American state of Maine is world-famous for its lobster industry, and people there were recently quite upset to discover what they considered an obvious error in a new smartphone emoji.
The lobster emoji was originally designed with an incorrect number of legs. Upon seeing the shellfish represented as an emoji with just six legs in addition to its two large claws, residents of the state of Maine – and even a US senator – urged the emoji collaborative group the Unicode Consortium to add two more legs in order to make the lobster anatomically correct. Unicode complied, and when the lobster emoji is rolled out to smartphones across the globe, it will have eight legs and two claws – just like the real thing.
Quotations
“When I started cooking the meal at home, after I had started cooking in restaurants, I usually would prepare bay scallops or lobster.”
(Alain Ducasse)
View the full definition in the Macmillan Dictionary.
