soft-shelled crab

1. 1.

   freshly molted crab with new shell still tender and flexible

   Synonymssoft-shell crab

   Broadercrab
2. 2.

   edible crab that has recently molted and not yet formed its new shell

   Synonymssoft-shell crab

   Broadercrab

Questions about soft-shelled crab

What does soft-shelled crab mean?

soft-shelled crab means "freshly molted crab with new shell still tender and flexible". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for soft-shelled crab?

Close synonyms include soft-shell crab, soft-shell crab. 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-shelled crab a common word?

soft-shelled 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.