snake
/sneɪk/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms snakes snaking snaked snek
- noun Any of the suborder Serpentes of legless reptiles with long, thin bodies and fork-shaped tongues.
- noun (figurative) A person who acts deceitfully for personal or social gain; a treacherous person.
- noun A tool for unclogging plumbing.
- noun A tool to aid cable pulling.
- noun (UK, Australia) A flavoured jube (confectionary) in the shape of a snake.
- noun (slang) Trouser snake; the penis.
- noun (mathematics) A series of Bézier curves.
- noun (cartomancy) The seventh Lenormand card.
- verb (intransitive) To follow or move in a winding route. “The path snaked through the forest.”
- verb (transitive, Australia, slang) To steal slyly. “He snaked my DVD!”
- verb (transitive) To clean using a plumbing snake.
- verb (US, informal) To drag or draw, as a snake from a hole; often with out.
- verb (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.
- verb (African-American Vernacular, MLE) To inform; to rat; often with out. “He says he didn't snake and I believe him.”
- verb (skateboarding, slang) To interfere with another's run or to take one's run out of turn.
- proper noun (astrology, timekeeping) The sixth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.
- proper noun (video games) An early computer game, later popular on mobile phones, in which the player attempts to manoeuvre a perpetually growing snake so as to collect food items and avoid colliding with walls or the snake's tail.
- proper noun A surname.
- proper noun A river in the northwestern United States, tributary to the Columbia.
Synonyms
Joe Blake serpent rat backstabber betrayer cockatrice double-crosser quisling ratter recreant renegade snake in the grass swike traitor treacher treacherer treasonist turntippet withersake wolf in sheep's clothing ophidian Snake River Hydra
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”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Any species of the order Ophidia; an ophidian; a serpent, whether harmless or venomous. See Ophidia, and Serpent.
- verb To drag or draw, as a snake from a hole; --often with out. [Colloq. U.S.] Bartlett.
- verb 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.
- verb To crawl like a snake.
Etymology [AS. snaca; akin to LG. snake, schnake, Icel. snakr, sn, Dan. snog, Sw. snok; of uncertain origin.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “snake”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details