razor clam
1
5.4
- noun
- /ˈreɪzər klæm/
:
almeja navaja
- On Sunday, we drove to the town of Ninilchik and walked around the old Russian Orthodox church, and when the tide was perfect, we went down on the beach and dug razor clams and got our hands all smelly with cleaning and eating them, and in the campground that night, I kept that image of her, digging in the mud with her arms deep in the earth, laughing and loving it.
- shell of a razor clam
- Beer-battered razor clams
- digging for razor clams
Examples
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Fried razor clams and cold beer are on the menu tonight.
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The South Sound and Hood Canal are good options for digging littleneck clams and picking oysters, while razor clam digs on the sandy ocean beaches.
Blog text (6) -
This is a razor fish or razor clam.
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The night I was there, the dish that now features mussels was done with razor clams.
Blog text (14) -
Beer-battered razor clams go well with sweet potato fries and coleslaw.
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While there, be sure to try the tender, lightly breaded razor clams, an oversized bivalve harvested from the Oregon-Washington coast.
Synonyms
A small sea clam with a long narrow curved shell like the handle of a knife
A sea clam with a long narrow shell that lives in sand
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is literal and compositional: 'razor' describes the shape/appearance and 'clam' names the bivalve, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer a clam that looks like a razor. This kind of noun-noun naming pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, making the meaning readily predictable from the constituents.
Etymology
Razor clam gets its name from its long, thin shell that looks like a razor and can be very sharp, so people began calling this kind of clam a 'razor clam'.