Definitions

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

  • adverb In the manner of a snake; serpentine, with twisting or wriggling motions.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

snake +‎ -wise

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Examples

  • Then I squirmed out of my cramped bed and wrig - gled snakewise to the right; once behind brush, I got to my feet, my dart gun drawn.

    Three Against The Witch World Norton, Andre 1965

  • Sometimes it was so low that we had to go snakewise.

    The Making Of A Novelist An Experiment In Autobiography David Christie Murray

  • He had invented a silent, gliding movement as he lay scheming -- by means of strong tufts of grass he meant to gradually pull his body, snakewise, little by little away from the open into the wood.

    Queensland Cousins Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

  • It comes out of the ground as two ivy trunks on opposite sides of the stoutest bole, but at a height of four feet from the surface the two join and ascend the tree as one round iron-coloured and iron-hard stem, which goes curving and winding snakewise among the branches as if with the object of roping them to save them from being torn off by the winds.

    Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn 1881

  • "De Animalibus," a manuscript by the great medieval friar and scientist Albertus Magnus, lists 477 animals and classifies them by their means of getting around: on four legs, swimming, flying or snakewise.

    The Earth Times Online Newspaper 2009

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