shrimp

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various small, chiefly marine decapod crustaceans of the suborder Natantia, many species of which are edible, having a compressed or elongated body with a well-developed abdomen, long legs and antennae, and a long spinelike projection of the carapace.
2. n. Any of various similar crustaceans, such as certain isopods and amphipods.
3. n. Slang A person regarded as unimportant.
4. n. Slang A person who is small in stature.
5. v. To fish for shrimp.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To contract; shrink.
2. n. A salt-water long-tailed ten-footed crustacean of the family Crangonidæ, and especially of the genus Crangon. C. vulgarisis the common shrimp of Great Britain, about 2 inches long, greenish-gray dotted with brown, of fragile structure, somewhat translucent, and esteemed a delicacy as food. It boils to a brown color, not red as is usual with crustaceans. The shrimps are closely related to prawns, and one of the prawns, Pandalus annulicornis, a British species, is often miscalled shrimp. The name is also extended to various related crustaceans. Among those bearing this name in the United States are some Gammaridæ, as Gammarus fasciatus; species of Pandalus, as P. annulicornis, the deep-water shrimp, and P. danæ, which is dried in California for exportation to China; the river-shrimp, Palæmon ohionis; and Penæus brasiliensis of the Carolinas, Florida, etc. See also cut under Gammarus.
3. n. A little wrinkled person; a dwarfish creature; a manikin: in contempt.
4. To catch or fish for shrimps.

Wiktionary

1. n. any of many swimming, often edible crustaceans, with slender legs, long whiskers and long abdomens
2. n. uncountable the flesh of the crustaceans
3. n. slang a small, puny or unimportant person
4. v. intransitive to fish for shrimp

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. obsolete To contract; to shrink.
2. n. Any one of numerous species of macruran Crustacea belonging to Crangon and various allied genera, having a slender body and long legs. Many of them are used as food. The larger kinds are called also prawns. See Illust. of decapoda.
3. n. In a more general sense, any species of the macruran tribe Caridea, or any species of the order Schizopoda, having a similar form.
4. n. In a loose sense, any small crustacean, including some amphipods and even certain entomostracans. See under fairy, and brine.
5. n. Figuratively, a little wrinkled man; a dwarf; -- in contempt.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. fish for shrimp
2. n. any of various edible decapod crustaceans
3. n. disparaging terms for small people
4. n. small slender-bodied chiefly marine decapod crustaceans with a long tail and single pair of pincers; many species are edible