Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various edible freshwater predatory fishes of the family Channidae, having an elongated body with long dorsal and anal fins and large scales on the head, native to Asia and Africa and established elsewhere.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as snake's-head, 1.
  • noun A plant, the turtle-head, Chelone glabra, used in medicine as a tonic and aperient. See Chelone.
  • noun A fish of the family Ophiocephalidæ.
  • noun A snake-headed turtle, Chelys matamata, having a large flat carapace and long pointed head, found in South America. See cut under Chelydidæ.
  • noun The end of a flat railroad-rail when curling upward.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A loose, bent-up end of one of the strap rails, or flat rails, formerly used on American railroads. It was sometimes so bent by the passage of a train as to slip over a wheel and pierce the bottom of a car.
  • noun The turtlehead.
  • noun The Guinea-hen flower. See Snake's-head, and under Guinea.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun slang A Chinese smuggler, especially one who smuggles people
  • noun A showy perennial plant, Chelone glabra, found in North American marshlands; the turtlehead
  • noun A loose, bent-up end of one of the strap rails, or flat rails, formerly used on American railroads. It was sometimes so bent by the passage of a train as to slip over a wheel and pierce the bottom of a car.
  • noun The Guinea-hen flower.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun showy perennial of marshlands of eastern and central North America having waxy lanceolate leaves and flower with lower part creamy white and upper parts pale pink to deep purple
  • noun showy perennial of marshlands of eastern and central North America having waxy lanceolate leaves and flower with lower part creamy white and upper parts pale pink to deep purple

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The locals supposedly started a snakehead population in flushing meadows/corona lake in Queens NY because snakehead is apparently quite the delicacy for local Koreans.

    Ever Eat A Snakehead? 2009

  • The locals supposedly started a snakehead population in flushing meadows/corona lake in Queens NY because snakehead is apparently quite the delicacy for local Koreans.

    Ever Eat A Snakehead? 2009

  • The snakehead is not in Ohio yet, but does it pose a threat to your fishing rivers, streams, lakes, or ponds?

    Snake Heads 2009

  • He's a snakehead, which is the term used to describe Chinese human smugglers of illegal aliens.

    Mind Over Malevolence: Jeffrey Deaver talks about his brilliant fictional detective Lincoln Rhyme and his arch-nemesis the Coffin Dancer 2010

  • Apparently there is a fish known as a snakehead that has shark-like teeth, walks on land and eats other creatures that fish were likely never meant to eat.

    TiVo-Worthy TV for the Week of December 9, 2007 2007

  • The snakehead was the talk of Chinatown since all the Chinese-language newspapers had articles about Mr. Wu's arrest, and even featured photos of the fish's razor-sharp teeth.

    NYT > Home Page By LIZ ROBBINS 2011

  • In China, the snakehead is a sweet, meaty staple harvested in farms, and when boiled into soup, it is reputed to possess remarkable healing properties.

    NYT > Home Page By LIZ ROBBINS 2011

  • There, posing as buyers looking for a child, detectives arranged a meeting with the so-called snakehead, the gangster who had sold the boy on.

    BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition 2009

  • "snakehead" - shaped, which leads me to believe that they came into being in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

    Mandolin Cafe News 2009

  • When Alex discovers that a woman from the wreck and the congressman's lover have the same rose tattoo - the brand of a "snakehead", a master of a human trafficking operation - it dawns on her that these cases aren't as unrelated as they seem and that the entire political landscape of New York City could hang in the balance of her investigation.

    Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein: Book summary 2010

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