英和和英

語源 1

First attested early 1400s as various 中期英語 forms prayne, prane, praune, and prawne, which present no clear cognates in languages other than English. The forms suggest a hypothetical 古期英語 form *prægn, where *æg would have evolved into 中期英語 *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.

発音

• (英国発音) IPA: /pɹɔːn/
• (米国発音, Canada) IPA: /pɹɔn/, /pɹɑn/
• (General Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /pɹoːn/
• 韻: -ɔːn

名詞

prawn (countable and uncountable, plural prawn or prawns)

1. A crustacean of the suborder Dendrobranchiata.
   • 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 197:

     The aphrodisiac nature of prawns is evident in an epigram by the Greek poet Asclepiades.

2. (Commonwealth) A crustacean, sometimes confused with shrimp.
3. (Australia, colloquial, derogatory) Synonym of butterface: A woman with an attractive body but an unattractive face.

   She's a prawn!

4. (Australia, slang) A fool, an idiot.
   • 1999 August 2, Les Brown, “This old "almah" controversy”, in alt.religion.christian‎ (Usenet):

     This is utter dribble. I've not read much worse than this in a long time - and he admits he doesn't know - "or so I am told". Get real, you prawn.

   • 2001 February 1, Ned Latham, “Lovesick Puppy Poetry - Volume 1”, in aus.culture.true-blue‎ (Usenet):

     He didn't say he was accused of that, prawn.

派生語

動詞

prawn (third-person singular simple present prawns, present participle prawning, simple past and past participle prawned)

1. (intransitive) To fish for prawns.

語源 2

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

名詞

prawn (plural prawns)

1. Alternative form of porn.

参照

• James A. H. Murray et al., editors (1884–1928), “Prawn”, in A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford English Dictionary), London: Clarendon Press, →OCLC.
• Århammar, Nils (1986): Aspects of Language: Geolinguistics