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Glite Dictionary
shrimp cocktail

shrimp cocktail

14 2.3
A cold starter of cooked shrimp served with a spicy sauce
  • noun
  • /ʃrɪmp ˈkɒkˌteɪl/
  • US
translation icon : cóctel de camarones
  • For dinner, we decided to share a delicious shrimp cocktail as an appetizer.
  • jumbo shrimp cocktail
  • eat shrimp cocktail
  • start with shrimp cocktail

So my favorite space food was shrimp cocktail.

Examples

  • If Fido enjoys a shrimp cocktail and a ham-and-cheese sandwich at the end of a long walk, all the power to him.

    Academic text (2007)

  • The stewards began serving shrimp cocktail and prime rib a little ahead of schedule.

    Academic text (2012)

  • I hope you like shrimp cocktail.

    Snow Cake (2006)

  • I hope you like shrimp cocktail, because we want you to be the guest of honor at our wedding next week.

    Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

  • Waitress, could I get that shrimp cocktail I saw in the glass case?

    Tommy Boy (1995)

  • Everybody else just arrived, ate their complimentary shrimp cocktails, and left.

    Blog text (14)

  • Start with shrimp cocktail.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • l'll take you out to the Cliff House, and we'll have shrimp cocktail... and steak and French fries and a little wine.

    Pal Joey (1957)

  • We ate shrimp cocktail, drank cheap wine, laughed at Bush, and celebrated the certainty of right besting wrong.

    Blog text (11)

  • A single rose in a crystal vase was surrounded by the remains of shrimp cocktail, steak au poivre, pommes frites, and zucchini squash.

    Fiction book (1993)

Synonyms

cocktail
vsshrimp cocktail
52 4.1

A small first course of seafood or fruit often served with a spicy sauce

is a specific cold shellfish starter served with a spiced sauce
prawn cocktail
vsshrimp cocktail
  • Archaic
1 2.7

A cold starter of prawns in a creamy pink sauce

is the same dish but specifically made with a different small shellfish

Surface Forms

shrimp cocktail singular
shrimp cocktails plural

Morphology

shrimp + cocktail

The meaning is directly compositional: 'shrimp' (small seafood) + 'cocktail' (an appetizer/seafood served with sauce) yields an appetizer of shrimp with sauce, so the overall sense is predictable from the parts. This culinary naming pattern (e.g., 'prawn/prawn cocktail') is common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand the phrase.

Etymology

The dish shrimp cocktail got its name because cooks served cold shrimp in a small glass with a spicy sauce that looked like a cocktail. One popular story says people called that sauce 'cocktail', and that's why shrimp cocktail now means a cold starter of shrimp with spicy sauce.