prawn
/pɹoːn/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.87 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face.
Australian usage; Colloquial; Countable; Derogatory; Uncountable
noun
Alternative form of porn.
Example Sentences
- "The aphrodisiac nature of prawns is evident in an epigram by the Greek poet Asclepiades."
- "She's a prawn!"
- "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."
- "He didn't say he was accused of that, prawn."
Etymology
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. Etymology 1, noun sense 3 ("woman with attractive body and unattractive face") is from the idea of discarding the head of a prawn before eating it.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /pɹoːn/
- British English: /pɹɔːn/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Food.
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Aesop prawn
Alaskan prawn
banana prawn
come the raw prawn
common prawn
deep-sea prawn
deepwater prawn
Dublin Bay prawn