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What is "hermit crab"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
hermit crab
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A hermit crab carrying a sea anemone around on its shell.
▪ A hermit crab sticks sand and weed on its shell, and all Jay's glitz was camouflage.
▪ Anyone who has tried to remove a hermit crab from its shell will know how tenacious these creatures can be.
▪ But the cowbird and hermit crab can make no such claims.
▪ Sometimes you can find a Zebra flatworm sharing the snail shell with the hermit crab.
▪ Suitably sized shells are often in short supply and in some areas this limits the hermit crab population.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hermit crab

Hermit \Her"mit\, n. [OE. ermite, eremite, heremit, heremite, F. hermite, ermite, L. eremita, Gr. ?, fr. ? lonely, solitary. Cf. Eremite.]

  1. A person who retires from society and lives in solitude; a recluse; an anchoret; especially, one who so lives from religious motives.

    He had been Duke of Savoy, and after a very glorious reign, took on him the habit of a hermit, and retired into this solitary spot.
    --Addison.

  2. A beadsman; one bound to pray for another. [Obs.] ``We rest your hermits.''
    --Shak.

  3. (Cookery) A spiced molasses cookie, often containing chopped raisins and nuts.

    Hermit crab (Zo["o]l.), a marine decapod crustacean of the family Pagurid[ae]. The species are numerous, and belong to many genera. Called also soldier crab. The hermit crabs usually occupy the dead shells of various univalve mollusks. See Illust. of Commensal.

    Hermit thrush (Zo["o]l.), an American thrush ( Turdus Pallasii), with retiring habits, but having a sweet song.

    Hermit warbler (Zo["o]l.), a California wood warbler ( Dendroica occidentalis), having the head yellow, the throat black, and the back gray, with black streaks.

Wiktionary
hermit crab

n. A type of crab from the superfamily Paguroidea, which salvages empty seashells or other portable objects to permanently shelter and protect their soft abdomens.

WordNet
hermit crab

n. small soft-bodied marine crustaceans living in cast-off shells of gastropods

Wikipedia
Hermit crab

Hermit crabs are decapod crustaceans of the superfamily Paguroidea.

Most of the 1100 species possess an asymmetrical abdomen which is concealed in an empty gastropod shell carried around by the hermit crab.

Usage examples of "hermit crab".

A hermit crab scuttled over his back sending a bolt of the electric willies shooting up his spine to speed him to cover.

They ring as hollow as an abandoned hermit crab's shell, and are as fleeting as gulls feeding in shark-infested waters.

In New Caledonia, Kabo Mandalat, the female demon who causes elephantiasis, is a gigantic hermit crab, with legs as big as coconut trees, living in the shell of an enormous Delium-melanostoma.

So much like a hermit crab, she thought - only this was a hermit octopus, who constructed its own shell.

Everything else seemed dull in comparison, hollow and worn as the cast off shell of a hermit crab.

So much like a hermit crab, she thought-only this was a hermit octopus, who constructed its own shell.

Glancing down, he saw that a large man with eye sockets picked clean by a hermit crab still curled up inside one of them had grabbed him.

Looking down at the sand he put out a foot to impede the progress of a perambulating hermit crab.

She wants more out of life than you hiding like a hermit crab in that dingy, half-buried so-called garden apartment.