shrimp
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "shrimp", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "shrimp" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "shrimp" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
shrimp is aEnglishnoun. It means: Any of many swimming, often edible, crustaceans, chiefly of the infraorder Caridea or the suborder Dendrobranchiata, with slender legs, long whiskers and a long abdomen. Pronounced /ʃɹɪmp/. It ranks #9,815 in English word frequency. Often confused with strip and shrine.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | shrimp |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ʃɹɪmp/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #9,815 |
| Misspellings tracked | 10 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for shrimp is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃɹɪmp/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,815 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 10 documented wrong-spelling variants for shrimp, with forms such as "hsrimp", "shhrimp", and "shirmp". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 9 confusable-pair relationships, "strip", "shrine", "shrink", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English schrimpe (“shrimp, puny person”), possibly from or related to Middle Low German schrempen (“to wrinkle”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaz (“shrivelled”), from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną (“to shrivel”), from Proto-Indo-European *s… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is shrimp, spelled S-H-R-I-M-P, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Any of many swimming, often edible, crustaceans, chiefly of the infraorder Caridea or the suborder Dendrobranchiata, with slender legs, long whiskers and a long abdomen.
- 2The flesh of such crustaceans.
- 3A small, puny or unimportant person.
- 4Synonym of butterface
- 5A small penis.
Etymology
From Middle English schrimpe (“shrimp, puny person”), possibly from or related to Middle Low German schrempen (“to wrinkle”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaz (“shrivelled”), from Proto-Germanic *skrimpaną (“to shrivel”), from Proto-Indo-European *skremb-, *skr̥mb-. See also Middle High German schrimpf (“a scratch, minor wound”), Norwegian skramp (“thin horse, thin man”); also Old English sċrimman (“to shrink”) and scrimp, Middle High German schrimpfen (“to shrink, dry up”), Swedish skrympa (“to shrink”); also Lithuanian skrembti (“to crust over, stiffen”), and possibly Albanian shkrumb (“embers, ashes; crumble”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsrimp,shhrimp,shirmp,shrimmp,shrimpp,shripm,shrmip,shrrimp,srhimp,sshrimp
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for shrimp
Misspelling Variants of "shrimp"
Frequency rank: #9,815 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: