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snake

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: Snake

English

Alternative forms

  • (internet slang, childish, jocular) snek

Etymology

From Middle English snake, from Old English snaca (“snake, serpent, reptile”), from Proto-West Germanic *snakō (“slider, snake”), from *snakan (“to creep, slide”), related to Old High German snahhan (“to sneak, slide”). Compare also Proto-Germanic *snēkô (“creeper, crawler”).

Cognate with German Low German Snake, Snaak (“snake”), dialectal German Schnake (“adder”), Danish snog (“grass snake”), Swedish snok (“grass snake”), Norwegian Nynorsk snåk (“viper, adder”), Faroese snákur (“grass snake”), Icelandic snákur (“snake”).

Pronunciation

Noun

snake (plural snakes)

  2. Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptile with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues.
    Synonyms: joe blake, serpent
    • 1892, Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates‎:
      The man writhed like a trampled snake, and a red foam bubbled from his lips.
    • 1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 263:
      After dark the train is a lighted snake, as, even when the passengers' lights are out, each carriage has a side-light in the middle just under the eaves.
  4. (figurative) A person who acts deceitfully for personal or social gain; a treacherous person.
    Hypernyms: jerk < person; see also Thesaurus:jerk
    Hyponym: snake in the grass
    Near-synonyms: rat; see also Thesaurus:betrayer
    • 1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC:
      Mrs. Kenwigs was horror-stricken to think that she should ever have nourished in her bosom such a snake, adder, viper, serpent, and base crocodile, as Henrietta Petowker.
    • 2021, Peter McKenna, 5:51 from the start, in Kin, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Frank Kinsella (Aidan Gillen):
      Well, if it was Moore, he's a fucking snake.
    • 2025 August 26, Jon Henley, “Old master painting looted by Nazis spotted in Argentinian property listing”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:
      [Friedrich] Kadgien—described by US interrogators as “not a true Nazi” but “a snake of the lowest sort”—subsequently left Switzerland for Brazil then Argentina, the paper said, where he started a company and a family and died in 1978, aged 71.
  5. A tool for unclogging plumbing.
    Synonyms: auger, plumber's snake
  6. A tool to aid cable pulling.
    Synonym: wirepuller
  7. (UK, Australia) A flavoured jube (confectionary) in the shape of a snake.
  8. (slang) Trouser snake; the penis.
    Synonym: trouser snake
  9. (mathematics) A series of Bézier curves.
  10. (cartomancy) The seventh Lenormand card.
  11. (African-American Vernacular, MLE, MTE) An informer; a rat.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:informant
    Gem’s a snake for Kamale, man.
    • 2017 April 7, “War Dub”, performed by Little T (Josh Tate):
      Yo, bare people and the snakes, yeah, they're just grass / Next minute you're the mate, yeah / Next day stab in the back
  12. (finance, historical) Ellipsis of snake in the tunnel.
    • 2001, W. Bonefeld, The Politics of Europe: Monetary Union and Class, page 69:
      The snake failed to provide an anchor for currency stability and, through it, disinflation.
  13. Ellipsis of black snake (“firework that creates a trail of ash”).

Derived terms

Descendants

  • → Maori: neke
  • → Sranan Tongo: sneki

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

snake (third-person singular simple present snakes, present participle snaking, simple past and past participle snaked)

  1. (intransitive) To follow or move in a winding route.
    Synonyms: slither, wind
    The path snaked through the forest.
    The river snakes through the valley.
    • 1996 September 24, Mark Addinall, “Football fever...”, in aus.personals‎ (Usenet):
      Any Brisbane female interested in snaking down a few beers whilst watching the footy on a big screen?
    • 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Bournemouth (circa 1880)”, in RAIL, number 947, pages 59–60:
      Opened in June of that year [1880], the station was the southern terminus of the much-lamented Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway (the S&D or 'Slow and Dirty'), which snaked its way down from Bath.
  2. (transitive, Australia, slang) To steal slyly.
    He snaked my DVD!
    • 2001 April 5, Hyena, “Home made supercharger ?”, in aus.cars‎ (Usenet):
      Although it wouldn't be the first time some one patented an idea that I'd had a year earlier. […] Someone already has :) […] F*CK ME !! Snaked again !
  3. (transitive) To clean using a plumbing snake.
  4. (US, informal) To drag or draw, as a snake from a hole; often with out.
    • November 27 1835, N.B. St. John, letter to George Thompson
      his wife and children shall not be forced to flee from the hearth of a friend, lest they should be snaked out by men in civic authority
  5. (nautical) To wind round spirally, as a large rope with a smaller, or with cord, the small rope lying in the spaces between the strands of the large one; to worm.
  6. (African-American Vernacular, MLE) To inform; to rat; often with out.
    He says he didn't snake and I believe him.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Further reading

Anagrams

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Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Old English snaca, from Proto-West Germanic *snakō.

Pronunciation

Noun

snake (plural snakes or snaken or snake)

  1. snake
  2. serpent

Descendants

  • English: snake (see there for further descendants)
  • Scots: snake

References

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