hard-shell crab

1. 1.

   edible crab that has not recently molted and so has a hard shell

   Broadercrab

Questions about hard-shell crab

What does hard-shell crab mean?

hard-shell crab means "edible crab that has not recently molted and so has a hard shell".

Is hard-shell crab a common word?

hard-shell crab is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.