Meaning of dead men's fingers | Babel Free

Definitions

The gills of edible crabs.

informal, plural, plural-only

Examples

“Holding down the hard back shell with your fingers, use your thumbs to lever the body up and out of the carapace. Then pull out and discard the feathery gills or dead men’s fingers, the small mouth part and the stomach bag that lies behind it.”

“As old folks tell it, he says, the nickname [‘dead men’] comes from stories of crabs eating the bodies of sailors lost in shipwrecks. In other crab-enthusiastic locales, such as Maryland, the term takes on a different form and meaning. In the Chesapeake Bay area, some call the gills “dead men's fingers” for their withered, pale appearance.”

“Take a cooked 1kg mud crab and lift off the shell from the body. Take out the grey, feather-like gills – often called “dead men’s fingers”.”

CEFR level