soft-shell clam

Questions about soft-shell clam

What does soft-shell clam mean?

soft-shell clam means "a clam that is usually steamed in the shell". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for soft-shell clam?

Close synonyms include steamer, steamer clam, long-neck clam, steamer, steamer clam. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is soft-shell clam a common word?

soft-shell clam 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.