snail

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“
'Twas a difficult task, Monsieur; for the snail is the most constant in its attachments of all the animal kingdom, and I have known them to die, time and again, because their mates had died Pining away in a green and yaller melancholie as your grand poet has it, Monsieur.

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Definitions (51)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Any of numerous aquatic or terrestrial mollusks of the class Gastropoda, typically having a spirally coiled shell, broad retractile foot, and distinct head.
  2. noun A slow-moving, lazy, or sluggish person.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (45)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

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Examples (50)

  • And a few smashes later, the snail is broken open, and he's got a good dinner. —  Sheila Patek clocks the fastest animals
  • He moved like a snail, across and across, between the rows of benches. —  Overture to Death - Ngaio Marsh - Alleyn 08: 1939
  • I'd seen him shoot the tread-snail, and I didn't think he'd die unpaid for. —  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Four-Day Planet, by H. Beam Piper
  • The oxygen-poor blood inside the snail is funneled through the gill in the opposite direction of the current created by the cilia. —  Featured Articles - Encyclopedia of Earth
  • At present, little is known about the elusive snail, which is distinguished by two white bands that loop its shell. —  northernstar.com.au: The Northern Star
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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old English snægl.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also snayle; dial. snile; from Middle English snaile, snayle, snile, snyle, snele, from Anglo-Saxon *snægel, snægl, snegel, snegl = Middle Low German sneil, Low German snagel = Middle High German snegel, sneggel, snäggel, German dial. schnegel = Icelandic snigill = Danish snegl = Swedish snigel, a snail, literally ‘a small creeping thing,’ a little reptile, diminutive of a simpler form represented by snag, from the same root as Anglo-Saxon snaca, a snake: see snag, snake.
  2. Early modern English also snayle; = Danish snegle; from the noun.
 

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/sneɪl/
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