cangrejo

Spanish

Etymology

From Old Spanish cangro (“crab”) +‎ -ejo (diminutive ending), with the first element derived from Latin cancer (whence the modern borrowing cáncer). Coromines & Pascual dismiss the possibility of a Vulgar Latin *cancriculus on the grounds that a likelier diminutive at that stage would have been *cancerculus (or the existing Latin cancellus), that there are no native cognates in other Romance languages, and that medieval Spanish had cangro.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kanˈɡɾexo/ [kãŋˈɡɾe.xo]

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -exo
• Syllabification: can‧gre‧jo

Noun

cangrejo m (plural cangrejos)

1. crab

Derived terms

• boca de cangrejo
• cangrejal
• cangrejero
• cangrejo de los cocoteros
• cangrejo de mar
• cangrejo de río
• cangrejo ermitaño
• cangrejo guisante
• cangrejo señal
• cangrejo violinista
• ojos de cangrejo
• pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo

 

Related terms

• cáncer

 

Descendants

• → Asturian: cangrexu
• → Galician: cangrexo, caranguexo
• → Portuguese: caranguejo

See also

• camarón
• centolla
• cigala
• gamba
• jaiba f
• langosta f
• nécora

Further reading

• “cangrejo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014