soft-shell clam
- noun
- /ˈsɔftˌʃɛl klæm/
:
almeja de concha blanda
- To prepare a tasty chowder, you should start with fresh soft-shell clams.
Examples
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At the seafood restaurant, I ordered a plate of soft-shell clams sautéed in garlic butter.
-
For example, flounders, lobsters, soft-shell clams, and mussels in the harbor have all been found to contain PCBs.
Academic text (1992) -
During low tide, we found many soft-shell clams buried in the sandy beach.
Synonyms
28
2.0
Sea animals with a shell, like shrimp or oysters
24
1.0
The edible meat from a shellfish that people cook and eat
11
5.6
A soft-bodied animal like a snail or clam that often has a shell
2
7.5
A small clam cooked in its shell with steam
An edible clam with a thin oval shell that lives on coasts and is called the soft-shell clam
A soft clam often steamed and eaten in its shell
How Hard
Surface Forms
Morphology
soft-shell + clam
The compound is compositionally straightforward: 'soft-shell' describes a shell that is soft/thin and 'clam' names the bivalve, so a learner who knows 'soft', 'shell', and 'clam' can infer a clam with a soft or thin shell. This modifier+noun pattern is morphologically transparent and cross-linguistically common, making the meaning predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Soft-shell clam: The name soft-shell clam comes from the animal's very thin, easy-to-break shell, so people called it 'soft-shell' to show it is not as hard as other clams. That's why the name means a clam with a thin shell that people dig from mudflats and eat.