snake

From Middle English snake, from Old English snaca (“snake, serpent, reptile”), from Proto-Germanic *snakô (compare German Low German Snake, Snaak (“snake”), dialectal German Schnake (“adder”), Swedish snok (“grass snake”), Icelandic snákur (“snake”)), derived from *snakaną (“to crawl”) (compare Old High German snahhan), from Proto-Indo-European *sneg- (“to crawl; a creeping thing”). Cognate with Sanskrit नाग (nāgá, “snake”)). Doublet of nāga.

• enPR: snāk, IPA^(key): /ˈsneɪk/

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• Rhymes: -eɪk

snake (plural snakes)

1. A legless reptile of the sub-order Serpentes with a long, thin body and a fork-shaped tongue.
   • 1892, Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates‎:

     The man writhed like a trampled snake, and a red foam bubbled from his lips.

2. A treacherous person.
   • 1838, Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby‎:

     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.

3. A tool for unclogging plumbing.
4. A tool to aid cable pulling.
5. (slang) trouser snake; the penis
6. (mathematics) A series of Bézier curves
7. (cartomancy) The seventh Lenormand card.

• (reptile): joe blake, serpent
• (plumbing tool): auger, plumber's snake
• (tool for cable pulling): wirepuller
• (slang: manbulge): trouser snake

• Sranan Tongo: sneki

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.

   The path snaked through the forest.

   • 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?

   The river snakes through the valley.

2. (transitive, Australia, slang) To steal slyly.

   He snaked my DVD!

   • 2019 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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Bartlett to this entry?)

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.

• (move in a winding path): slither, wind

• anguine

• Kasen, Keans, akens, asken, kaens, nakes, skean, sneak

• snak, snaca

From Old English snaca, from Proto-Germanic *snakô.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsnaːk(ə)/

snake (plural snakes or snaken or snake)

1. snake
2. serpent

• English: snake
• Scots: snak, snake, snaik

• “snāke (n.)” in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-04-03.