crawfish
Americannoun
verb (used without object)
noun
Usage
What does crawfish mean? Crawfish is another name for a crayfish, a freshwater crustacean related to the lobster but smaller. Crawfish is also sometimes used as the name of several similar saltwater crustaceans, especially the spiny lobster (also called the rock lobster). The plural of crawfish can be crawfish or crawfishes. When used as a plural, crawfish typically refers to them collectively, while crawfishes usually refers to two or more kinds or species (but this isn’t always the case). Crawfish aren’t fish—they’re shellfish. Other types of crustaceans include crabs, lobsters, and shrimp. There are several different species of both freshwater and saltwater crawfish. Freshwater ones are also referred to by the names crawdad and crawdaddy. Use of these terms varies by region. Crawfish can also be used as an informal verb meaning to back out of something or retreat—like a crawfish retreating under a rock. Example: When I was a kid, we used to catch crawfish in the creek.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of crawfish
1615–25; earlier crafish, cravish, cravis, variant outcomes of Middle French crevice crayfish
Compare meaning
How does crawfish compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A crawfish is a freshwater shellfish that resembles a small lobster, making it both tiny and tasty to seafood lovers. Crawfish, also known as crayfish or crawdads, are small crustaceans living in freshwater habitats like streams and swamps. They play a key role in the ecosystem by feeding on plants and animals, helping to keep their environment balanced and clean. In the Southern United States, crawfish are a culinary favorite, especially in crawfish boils where they are seasoned and cooked in large pots.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
OAKDALE, La.—This southwestern Louisiana city of 6,600 is home to a federal prison, a plywood mill and a couple of takeout crawfish joints.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 21, 2026
Government data shows crab landings down on previous years but catches of lobster, crawfish and scallops stable.
From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2025
When Kelsey Barnard Clark won the sixteenth season of "Top Chef," set in Kentucky, she clinched victory with a dish that defied fine dining expectations: cornbread and buttermilk with crawfish, boiled peanuts, cucumber and watermelon.
From Salon ● Mar. 6, 2025
The Clesies said their menu will include the dirty rice as well as boiled crawfish, crawfish etouffee and something called a “messi clesi,” which is a combination of the dirty rice and etouffee.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 26, 2024
“Giant crawfish hiding under rocks sounds terrifying, but the other stuff sounds great,” I said.
From "Hope Springs" by Jaime Berry
His pedler's pack was buried in the mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it.
From The Escape of Mr. Trimm His Plight and other Plights by Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
On the river-shore crawfishes were lazily creeping over the gravel.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. by Various
A great number of crawfishes had arrived from Germany that morning in cases and hampers, and the market was also crowded with river fish from Holland and England.
From The Fat and the Thin by Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred
Once I caught five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a really gorgeous crimson.
From The Cords of Vanity A Comedy of Shirking by Cabell, James Branch
If during his infancy he has seen without fear frogs, serpents, crawfishes, he will, when grown up, see without shrinking any animal that may be shown him.
From Émile or, Concerning Education; Extracts by Steeg, Jules
But did you miss the story of his crawfished admission that he was conversing through his chapeau ?
From Time Magazine Archive
If I crawfished before my own countrymen, what could I be expected to do when dealing with America's adversaries?
From Time Magazine Archive
This morning Buddy crawfished backward away from the brink of the overhanging rock.
From The Red Debt Echoes from Kentucky by MacDonald, Everett
Rick tugged at Scotty's suit, then crawfished backward through the marsh grass until he was sure the night watchers could not see him.
From The Flying Stingaree by Goodwin, Harold L. (Harold Leland)
A spider was spinning its web by the wall; now losing, now winning, now taking a fall; though often it tumbled, it breathed not a sob, nor crawfished nor grumbled, but stuck to its job.
From Rippling Rhymes by Mason, Walt
Brown would tell stories about crawfishing and his grandmother.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2016
He even tries to order — hoping to understand — his father’s life in “Map”: “Daddy goes./Trolling and trawling and crawfishing and crabbing and bass-boating/and trestle-jumping bare into rust-brackish water.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 18, 2010
He put in two varied years laboring as a longshoreman, crawfishing, even drew pay as a hired hand on an outback farm before his bank balance was equal to re-equipping Sheila111.
From Time Magazine Archive
He was hiding down by the bayou, in Old Man Martin’s crawfishing shack, and Martin got a nasty surprise one early afternoon when he found that Sanders boy sleeping in his cot.
From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender
He even knows how to go crawfishing, even though that isn’t technically fish.
From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
