yabby
/ˈjæb.i/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.33 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of various freshwater crayfish, typically of the genus Cherax, valued as food, especially Cherax destructor of southeastern Australia.
Australian usage
noun
A species of marine ghost shrimp, Trypaea australiensis, widely harvested by recreational anglers as bait; a nipper.
Australian usage
Example Sentences
- "Having arrived at night I can speak with some authority on the desolate feeling the road produces: the white fire-scarred trunks, the unsettling vision of yabbies moving from one side of the road to the other."
- "Wiradjuri people in New South Wales also built large dams, and then carried fish and yabbies in coolamons over large distances to stock the new waterholes."
- "Callianassa australiensis is known in southern New South Wales as the "ghost-nipper" (Dakin, Bennett and Pope, 1952), and in northern New South Wales and Queensland as the "yabby" (a word of aboriginal origin also applied to freshwater crayfish)."
- "Putting the yabby on a hook takes a little care and hook sizes need to match the physical dimensions of the yabby."
- "Now she held the net in front of the pump so Penny could empty its contents. The first suck was mud, the second sometimes yielded a couple of yabbies but on the third, three or four yabbies nearly always spurted out, flicking their tails, weakly opening and closing their nippers."
- "He would have known the Merri well, given the affinity between boys and creeks, and he probably fished and yabbied there."
Etymology
Borrowed from Wemba-Wemba yabij.
Word Breakdown
- Root: yabij