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I've been trawling through my collection of interesting Spanish words and found one more wich is not in the DRAE, Wiktionary, Larousse Gran Diccionario, Wikipedia, or Google Translate.

surime

My notes say it had something to do with food in Costa Rica. Google searches lead to a few recipes making it seem like something to do with fish or seafood, but nothing concrete.

(There's a possibility it's not Spanish or it's a trademark etc, in which case I may have to close the question but knowing for sure will still be a good thing.)

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    It's posible that you mean "surimi"?
    – Laura
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 21:22
  • It could be, if that word is used in Costa Rica. Or surime could be that CR variant of surimi. Maybe we need someone from CR with local knowledge?
    – hippietrail
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 21:24
  • Yeah, I'm guessing that it's "surimi" as well. The word is taken from Japanese, so that accounts for the variation in spelling.
    – Richard
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 21:25
  • I guess all we have to do now is figure out if it's been borrowed into CR Spanish or not to know whether to close the question or keep it...
    – hippietrail
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 21:27
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    In Spain I have heard sometimes "surimi" to refer to what it is more commonly called "palitos de cangrejo". Though according to wikipedia it's not exactly the same (the "palitos de cangrejo" are made of "surimi"). es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palito_de_cangrejo
    – Javi
    Commented May 31, 2012 at 9:16

3 Answers 3

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It's Surimi

Why I'm telling that?

  1. I have searched in the RAE and others dictionaries and I haven't found the word.
  2. I have search in the net and I found sea food related.
  3. Caribbean Spanish is sometime mixed with English so the "me" in surime if you pronounce it in English sounds like "mi" in Spanish.

Also, surimi is a type of crab imitation.

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  • I don't even know the word "surimi" from English but I did find it as a Japanese word when I looked for it on Wikipedia. I'd still like to hear from a Costa Rican person if it's really a word used there. I might've seen the one place that was using an exotic English or Japanese word for all I know (-: (I will vote you up, I'm just out of votes for now.)
    – hippietrail
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 23:11
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    @hippietrail: on your authority, I'll up vote it for you. ;-)
    – Jon Ericson
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 23:14
  • I´m from Costa Rica, and yes, "surime" is "surimi".
    – user8474
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 14:01
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I'm from Costa Rica and I have been looking not for the meaning, but from which animal it comes, and by the way it is something similar to crab meat; the same color but I don't know where it come from.

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I'm from Costa Rica and I have to admit that yes "surime" is a very peculiar word.

The meaning of it is the name assigned to that peace of fake crab used in sushi, salads, etc. Costa Rica does not have big population of real crab, so, surime would be the "perfect" substitute.

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