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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

prawn.

A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɹɔːn/Received-Pronunciation/pɹoːn/Australia, British, New-Zealand, Southern, Standard/pɹɔn//pɹɑn/cot-caught-merger

  1. A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.

    countable · uncountable

  2. A crustacean, sometimes confused with shrimp.

    Commonwealth · countable · uncountable

  3. Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face.

    Australia · colloquial · countable · derogatory · uncountable
    She's a prawn!

  4. A fool, an idiot.

    Australia · countable · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

First attested early 1400s as various Middle English forms prayne, prane, praune, and prawne, which present no clear cognates in languages other than English. The forms suggest a hypothetical Old English form *prægn, where *æg would have evolved into Middle English *ay, but it is unclear if the word is of Germanic origin, from another European language, or loaned from a substrate. In the Isle of Wight, a word prankle ("prawn") is recorded and thought to be related. Century, following Skeat, suggested transposition of an unrecorded Old French *parne, *perne related to Spanish perna (“a flat shellfish”), Old Italian perna and diminutive pernochie, parnocchie, glossed as "shrimps or prawne, fishes" by John Florio, but the OED considers Florio's entry incorrect and the suggested connection semantically and phonologically implausible. Etymology 1, noun sense 3 ("woman with attractive body and unattractive face") is from the idea of discarding the head of a prawn before eating it.

verb/pɹɔːn/Received-Pronunciation/pɹoːn/Australia, British, New-Zealand, Southern, Standard/pɹɔn//pɹɑn/cot-caught-merger

  1. To fish for prawns.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

First attested early 1400s as various Middle English forms prayne, prane, praune, and prawne, which present no clear cognates in languages other than English. The forms suggest a hypothetical Old English form *prægn, where *æg would have evolved into Middle English *ay, but it is unclear if the word is of Germanic origin, from another European language, or loaned from a substrate. In the Isle of Wight, a word prankle ("prawn") is recorded and thought to be related. Century, following Skeat, suggested transposition of an unrecorded Old French *parne, *perne related to Spanish perna (“a flat shellfish”), Old Italian perna and diminutive pernochie, parnocchie, glossed as "shrimps or prawne, fishes" by John Florio, but the OED considers Florio's entry incorrect and the suggested connection semantically and phonologically implausible. Etymology 1, noun sense 3 ("woman with attractive body and unattractive face") is from the idea of discarding the head of a prawn before eating it.

noun

  1. Alternative form of porn.

    alt-of · alternative
Where this word comes from

An alternative spelling of pron (pronounced identically with cot-caught merger), which in turn is a corrupted spelling of porn.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.