cangrejo

Meaning

crab

Hyphenated as

can‧gre‧jo

Gender

♂️ Masculine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/kanˈɡɾexo/

Etymology

From Old Spanish cangro (“crab”) + -ejo (diminutive ending), with the first element derived from Latin cancer (whence the modern borrowing cáncer). Coromines & Pascual dismiss the possibility of a Vulgar Latin *cancriculus on the grounds that a likelier diminutive at that stage would have been *cancerculus (or the existing Latin cancellus), that there are no native cognates in other Romance languages, and that medieval Spanish had cangro.