crab Louis

5.5

A cold salad of crab meat and lettuce with a creamy dressing

noun
/kræb ˈluːi/

: ensalada de cangrejo Louis

The restaurant is famous for its classic crab Louis served with homemade dressing.

Examples

For lunch, I ordered the crab Louis, which was fresh and delicious.
She prepared a crab Louis for the summer picnic, complete with crisp lettuce and ripe tomatoes.
I ordered a delicious crab Louis for lunch.
Have you ever tried crab Louis before?
The restaurant's specialty is the delicious crab Louis salad, served with a creamy dressing.
For lunch, I ordered a refreshing crab Louis, filled with tender crabmeat and crisp lettuce.
At the picnic, everyone enjoyed the crab Louis, a flavorful salad that combined seafood with a rich sauce.

Synonyms

crab cocktail

vscrab Louis

1 3.2

Cold cooked crab meat served with a sour or spicy sauce as a starter

uses a rich creamy dressing rather than a tangy or spicy sauce

Surface Forms

crab Louis singular

crab Louises plural

Morphology

crab + Louis

The constituent 'crab' clearly signals the main ingredient so a learner can infer it is a crab dish, but 'Louis' is an opaque proper name/eponym (and not lexically meaningful) that does not indicate the salad form or the creamy sauce. Because part of the meaning (crab-based food) is recoverable but the specific preparation and salad sense require prior knowledge, this is best classed as semi-transparent.

Etymology

Crab Louis may come from a cook or hotel owner named Louis who first served a crab dish with a special creamy sauce. People began to call the dish crab Louis, so today the name means a crab 'salad' dressed with the rich 'Louis' sauce.