Fish vs. Crab — What's the Difference?

Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups.

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) (Greek: βραχύς, romanized: brachys = short, οὐρά / οura = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the world's oceans, in fresh water, and on land, are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton, and have a single pair of pincers.

A limbless cold-blooded vertebrate animal with gills and fins living wholly in water

Any of various chiefly marine decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, having a hard carapace that covers a broad flattened cephalothorax with a small abdomen tucked beneath it, and an anterior pair of legs that are large and pincerlike.

A person who is strange in a specified way

Any of various similar decapod crustaceans, such as a hermit crab or a king crab.

A flat plate that is fixed on a beam or across a joint in order to give additional strength.

Crabmeat.

Catch or try to catch fish, typically by using a net or hook and line

A crab louse.

Search by groping or feeling for something concealed

Crabs(Slang) Infestation by crab lice.

Mend or strengthen with a fish.

The maneuvering of an aircraft partially into a crosswind to compensate for drift.

Join (rails in a railway track) with a fishplate.

A machine for handling or hoisting heavy weights.

Any of numerous cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates characteristically having fins, gills, and a streamlined body and including the bony fishes, such as catfishes and tunas, and the cartilaginous fishes, such as sharks and rays.

A crabapple tree or its fruit.

Any of various jawless aquatic craniates, including the lampreys and hagfishes.

A quarrelsome, ill-tempered person.

The flesh of such animals used as food.

See Cancer.

(Informal) A person, especially one considered deficient in something

To hunt or catch crabs.

To catch or try to catch fish.

To scurry sideways in the manner of a crab.

To look for something by feeling one's way; grope

To drift diagonally or sideways, especially when under tow.

To seek something in a sly or indirect way

To direct an aircraft into a crosswind.

To catch or try to catch (fish).

To direct (an aircraft) partly into a crosswind to eliminate drift.

To catch or try to catch fish in

To cause to move or scurry sideways.

To catch or pull as if fishing

To find fault; criticize someone or something.

(countable) A cold-blooded vertebrate animal that lives in water, moving with the help of fins and breathing with gills.

(Informal) To interfere with and ruin; spoil.

Any animal (or any vertebrate) that lives exclusively in water.

(Informal) To find fault with; complain about.

(Newfoundland) Cod; codfish.

To make ill-tempered or sullen.

(uncountable) The flesh of the fish used as food.

A crustacean of the infraorder Brachyura, having five pairs of legs, the foremost of which are in the form of claws, and a carapace.

(uncountable) A card game in which the object is to obtain cards in pairs or sets of four (depending on the variation), by asking the other players for cards of a particular rank.

(uncountable) The meat of this crustacean, served as food; crabmeat.

A woman.

A bad-tempered person.

An easy victim for swindling.

An infestation of pubic lice (Pthirus pubis).

A bad poker player. Compare shark (a good poker player).

The angle by which an aircraft's nose is pointed upwind of its groundtrack to compensate for crosswinds during an approach to landing; its crab angle.

A makeshift overlapping longitudinal brace, originally shaped roughly like a fish, used to temporarily repair or extend a spar or mast of a ship.

The state of an aircraft's nose being pointed upwind of its groundtrack to compensate for crosswinds during an approach to landing.

(nautical) A purchase used to fish the anchor.

(slang) A playing card with the rank of three.

A torpedo self-propelled explosive device.

(rowing) A position in rowing where the oar is pushed under the rigger by the force of the water.

(zoology) A paraphyletic grouping of the following extant taxonomic groups:

A defect in an outwardly normal object that may render it inconvenient and troublesome to use.

Class Myxini, the hagfish (no vertebrae)

(dated) An unsold book that is returned to the publisher.

Class Petromyzontida, the lampreys (no jaw)

The crab apple or wild apple.

Within infraphylum Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates (also including Tetrapoda))

The tree bearing crab apples, which has a dogbane-like bitter bark with medical use.

(cartomancy) The thirty-fourth Lenormand card.

A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick.

(prison slang) A new (usually vulnerable) prisoner.

A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc.

A male homosexual; a gay man.

A form of windlass, or geared capstan, for hauling ships into dock, etc.

A period of time spent fishing.

A machine used in ropewalks to stretch the yarn.

An instance of seeking something.

A claw for anchoring a portable machine.

(obsolete) A counter, used in various games.

The tree species Carapa guianensis, native to South America.

(intransitive) To hunt fish or other aquatic animals in a body of water.

(informal) carabiner

(transitive) To search (a body of water) for something other than fish.

(intransitive) To fish for crabs.

To use as bait when fishing.

To ruin.

(intransitive) To (attempt to) find or get hold of an object by searching among other objects.

(intransitive) To complain.

To talk to people in an attempt to get them to say something, or seek to obtain something by artifice.

(transitive) To complain about.

Of a batsman, to attempt to hit a ball outside off stump and miss it.

(intransitive) To drift or move sideways or to leeward by analogy with the movement of a crab.

To repair (a spar or mast) by fastening a beam or other long object (often called a fish) over the damaged part (see Noun above).

To move in a manner that involves keeping low and clinging to surfaces.

To hoist the flukes of.

To navigate (an aircraft, e.g. a glider) sideways against an air current in order to maintain a straight-line course.

A counter, used in various games.

To move (a camera) sideways.

A name loosely applied in popular usage to many animals of diverse characteristics, living in the water.

, to fly slightly off the straight-line course towards an enemy aircraft, as the machine guns on early aircraft did not allow firing through the propeller disk.

An oviparous, vertebrate animal usually having fins and a covering scales or plates. It breathes by means of gills, and lives almost entirely in the water. See Pisces.

(rare) To back out of something.

The twelfth sign of the zodiac; Pisces.

(obsolete) To irritate, make surly or sour

The flesh of fish, used as food.

To be ill-tempered; to complain or find fault.

A purchase used to fish the anchor.

(British dialect) To cudgel or beat, as with a crabstick

To attempt to catch fish; to be employed in taking fish, by any means, as by angling or drawing a net.

One of the brachyuran Crustacea. They are mostly marine, and usually have a broad, short body, covered with a strong shell or carapace. The abdomen is small and curled up beneath the body.

To seek to obtain by artifice, or indirectly to seek to draw forth; as, to fish for compliments.

The zodiacal constellation Cancer.

To catch; to draw out or up; as, to fish up an anchor.

A crab apple; - so named from its harsh taste.

To search by raking or sweeping.

A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick.

To try with a fishing rod; to catch fish in; as, to fish a stream.

A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc.

Any of various mostly cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates usually having scales and breathing through gills;

To make sour or morose; to embitter.

The flesh of fish used as food;

To beat with a crabstick.

(astrology) a person who is born while the sun is in Pisces

To drift sidewise or to leeward, as a vessel.

The twelfth sign of the zodiac; the sun is in this sign from about February 19 to March 20

Sour; rough; austere.

Seek indirectly;

Decapod having eyes on short stalks and a broad flattened carapace with a small abdomen folded under the thorax and pincers

Catch or try to catch fish or shellfish;

A quarrelsome grouch

(astrology) a person who is born while the sun is in Cancer

The fourth sign of the zodiac; the sun is in this sign from about June 21 to July 22

The edible flesh of any of various crabs

Infests the pubic region of the human body

A stroke of the oar that either misses the water or digs too deeply;

Direct (an aircraft) into a crosswind

Scurry sideways like a crab

Fish for crab

Complain;