snake – English noun declension

English noun forms of snake

Noun: snake
Singularsnake
Pluralsnakes

Sample Sentences

  • The man writhed like a trampled snake, and a red foam bubbled from his lips. [1892, Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates:]
  • 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. [1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 263:]
  • Near-synonyms: rat; see also Thesaurus:betrayer
  • 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. [1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC:]
  • Well, if it was Moore, he's a fucking snake. [2021, Peter McKenna, 5:51 from the start, in Kin, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Frank Kinsella (Aidan Gillen):]
  • [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. [2025 August 26, Jon Henley, “Old master painting looted by Nazis spotted in Argentinian property listing”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Sep 2025:]
  • Gem’s a snake for Kamale, man.
  • Yo, bare people and the snakes, yeah, they're just grass / Next minute you're the mate, yeah / Next day stab in the back [2017 April 7, “War Dub”, performed by Little T (Josh Tate):]
  • The snake failed to provide an anchor for currency stability and, through it, disinflation. [2001, W. Bonefeld, The Politics of Europe: Monetary Union and Class, page 69:]

Etymology

1. 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”).
2. 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”). See: Middle English Nouns 'snake', Old English Nouns 'snaca', German Nouns 'Schnake', Danish Nouns 'snog', Swedish Nouns 'snok', Faroese Nouns 'snákur', Icelandic Nouns 'snákur'.

Verbs referencing "snake"

Danish Nouns snog, Icelandic Nouns snákur, Dutch Nouns snoek, Swedish Nouns snok.