shellfish
A fisheries and colloquial term for an aquatic invertebrate having an inner or outer shell, such as a mollusc or crustacean, especially when edible.
Other meanings
A culinary and nutritional term for several groups of non-piscine, non-tetrapod, aquatic animals that are used as a food source. The term often exclusively refers to edible aquatic crustaceans, bivalve mollusks and cephalopod mollusks
A kind of
- seafood
Kinds of shellfish
- oyster
- clam
- crayfish
- lobster
- spiny lobster
- scallop
Related words
- shellfisher
- shellfishery
- shellfishing
Example sentences
Word history
From Old English "sċielfisċ".
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “shellfish” on Wiktionary, by its contributors; example sentences are from Tatoeba, credited to their authors above; related-word lists use Open English WordNet (CC BY 4.0, based on Princeton WordNet), published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.