cangrejo

Spanish

Etymology

From Old Spanish cangro (“crab”) + -ejo (diminutive ending), with the first element derived from Latin cancer (whence the modern borrowing cáncer). Coromines & Pascual dismiss the possibility of a Vulgar Latin *cancriculus on the grounds that a likelier diminutive at that stage would have been *cancerculus (or the existing Latin cancellus), that there are no native cognates in other Romance languages, and that Old Spanish had cangro.[1]

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /kanˈɡɾexo/ [kãŋˈɡɾe.xo]
Audio (file)
Rhymes: -exo
Syllabification: can‧gre‧jo

Noun

cangrejo m (plural cangrejos)

crab

Derived terms

cangrejero
cangrejo de los cocoteros
cangrejo de río
cangrejo ermitaño
cangrejo guisante
cangrejo señal
pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo

Related terms

cáncer

Descendants

→ Asturian: cangrexu
→ Galician: cangrexo, caranguexo
→ Portuguese: caranguejo

References

Joan Coromines; José A. Pascual (1984), “cangrejo”, in Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (in Spanish), volume I (A–Ca), Madrid: Gredos, →ISBN, page 806