Rob calls from the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia to discuss the lingo of crabbing. A male blue crab is a jimmy, and a female is called a sook, a silk, or sow. A crab that’s unsuitable for market because its flesh isn’t firm, it’s called a snot. A mating male is a buck and the female is called the rider. A male holding a sexually mature female is a doubler. A crab shortly after molting is a paper, and later a buckram, the word buckram, named after a kind of canvas. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Crabbing Lingo”
Hi there, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Rod. I’m in Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
What would you like to talk with us about?
Well, we wanted to talk about the terms for the crabs in this region.
You’re a crabber? You’re a crab fisherman?
No, no, I’m not a crabber. I guess you could say a conservationist, biologist.
That was my career. I retired.
But I found this real interesting when I moved to the area, and of course it’s an ongoing industry.
Everybody loves the blue crab.
Oh, yeah.
So you had some lingo in the business.
Yeah.
It’s around the male and the female and the life cycle and the mating.
And part of it is the derivation of the old words is nobody can figure that out.
And then the rest of it is just terms that you can probably understand by just the way they’re used.
But the two original terms that came to my mind were the name for the blue crab, the male and the female blue crab.
And what are those?
Well, the male is called the jimmy.
And the female is called the sook, S-O-O-K.
Okay.
Sook.
Yeah.
So the male blue crab is a jimmy, the female is a sook.
The sook is interesting, so that’s probably S-O-O-K, right?
Correct, yeah.
The reason that’s interesting to me is that term is sometimes used for female cattle, as in a cow.
So I wonder if it was borrowed from farming to refer to the female.
You know, that’s a good question.
This has been a bit of a cul-de-sac.
I don’t want to say backwater.
I want to say cul-de-sac.
Yeah.
A lot of old terms linger on here in the local vocabulary.
Now, what about, have you ever heard the female called a silk or a sow crab?
Never heard it called a sow crab, no.
A silk, S-I-L-K?
You know, I’m not sure.
There’s a whole vocabulary that I actually looked up one time,
Vocabulary of the crabs of the Chesapeake Bay,
But I don’t want to break into that right now.
Wait, this is a show about language.
What else are we going to do?
It’s not here, where?
They got some crazy terms.
Some of them are pretty descriptive.
If they weren’t sure if the flesh inside of a crab was hard enough to be a market crab, they’d break one of his small legs.
And if it came out like it’s a gooey film, he was known as a snot.
Oh, yeah.
I’ve heard that one.
Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
So it’s some great terms.
It’s all around.
And the life cycle is when they mate.
And when they mate, they’re called a buck and a rider.
The male is the buck, and the rider is the female.
Because the male has to hold the female while she loses her shell, her exoskeleton, because they’re called doublers then, and they’re cannibalistic.
And it’s the only time the male can mate with the female.
Yeah, see, she needs protection then, and she’s just a soft piece of meat.
They can’t mate when they’re in their hard shell.
So then there’s a whole vocabulary of what goes on with the female and the male and the change in the shell and how then there’s a market vocabulary that goes with the soft crab.
It’s really, really interesting.
Well, no, wait.
They’re cannibalistic, did you say?
If you’re a soft crab in the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay or on the seaside, yep, you’re nothing but meat.
Wow.
And anything out there, including another crab, except for the male, except for the buck.
He’s got you kind of cradled in his legs, and he’s got his pinchers out there in front of him to defend him,
Defend both of you while he’s mating with you.
That’s very descriptive.
I’m learning something new every day.
This is a family show, but thanks for that.
You’re reminding me of a different term, which I don’t think is related,
But bokrum is a term for a crab that has molted whose new shell has hardened, right?
She sheds.
Now she’s lost all of her exoskeletons.
They mate.
Now she’s a soft crab.
And then they got the vocabulary that goes with that.
And that’s primarily based on the grade of the crab and, you know, who they can sell them to.
And she’ll stay soft as long as you keep her out of the water.
But as soon as you put her in the water, she starts to harden up.
And first she becomes a paper.
And then she becomes a buckram.
I think buckram is like a kind of canvas or something.
That’s right.
It’s kind of a double-layered stiff fabric sometimes used for hat-making or book-binding, kind of held together with glue.
But, yeah, it’s a stiff fabric.
And so the shell probably reminded people of that.
I’ve got to say, Rod, this is all incredibly fascinating.
I think I’m in the wrong career.
Thank you for spending so much time with us and sharing your knowledge.
This is great.
Oh, you’re welcome.
Yeah, dig into it.
Come visit.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
And if you’ve got a field that you work in that’s got this wealth of language, hey, give us a call.
Tell us all about it, and we’ll share it with the world.
Or explain it in email to words@waywordradio.org.
