prawn vs. shrimp

Can anyone tell me the difference between a prawn and a shrimp?

Thanks in advance ! /g.

There is a difference biologically but when it comes to food, often the only difference is that prawns is used to describe very large shrimp, like 15 to a pound.

Im not aware of any particular difference taste wise though.

prawns are common in the UK, shrimp are a bit bigger and are common in the US...when i went to london i couldn't find shrimp anywhere..only prawns!

I don't think there is a difference. They're just two names for the same product. sun123 says prawns are bigger, positivelinny says shrimp are bigger.. Prawns and shrimp both come in varying sizes. They can both be really big or really small. Same thing, different name.

 

  Believe it or not, there is actually a difference between prawns and shrimps. The difference lies in their gill structure. Prawns have a branching gill structure, whilst the gill structure of shrimps is lamellar. There is also a difference in the way that the two brood their eggs. Prawns legs are longer than shrimps and the shrimp's front pair of pincers is larger, whilst the prawns second pair of pincers is bigger. Prawns are similar to lobster, as they have two pairs of small pincers but due to the fact that they are similar in size to shrimps, they are sometimes confused with them.

From Wikipedia:

While in biological terms prawns are of a distinct biological suborder of Decapoda, in commercial farming and fishery the terms shrimp and prawn are often used interchangeably. In European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, the word “prawns” is more commonly on menus than the term “shrimp”, which is used more often in North America. The term “prawn” is also loosely used to describe any large shrimp, especially those that come 15 (or fewer) to the pound (also called “jumbo shrimp”). Australia and other Commonwealth countries follow this European/British use to an even greater extent, using the word “prawn” almost exclusively. Paul Hogan’s use of the phrase “I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you” in a television advertisement was intended to make what he was saying easier for his American audience to understand, and was thus a deliberate distortion of what an Australian would typically say.

 

http://elyclarifies.blogspot.com/2005/03/shri mp-vs-prawns.html