When the term lobster entered the English language over a millennium ago, it was written as loppestre, and up until Chaucer’s era, it consistently had a p in the middle. The current b replaced the p in the sixteenth century, likely influenced by the Old English word lobbe, which means “spider”. The term loppestre is believed to be a distortion of the Latin word locusta, which meant both “lobster” and “locust” and is also the origin of the word locust (based on a perceived physical resemblance between the two). The exact origins of locusta are uncertain, but it is thought to be connected to lacerta, meaning “lizard”. The usage of the words lobster and locust were steadily increasing until the 1960s, when lobster surged in popularity while locust began to decline.
