snag
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈsnæɡ/
rhymes: -æɡ
Forms: form: snags
Etymology: From earlier snag (“stump or branch of a tree”), from Middle English *snagge, *snage, from Old Norse snagi (“clothes peg”) (compare Old Norse snag-hyrndr (“snag-horned, having jagged corners”)), perhaps ultimately from a derivative of Proto-Germanic *snakk-, *snēgg, variations of *snakaną (“to crawl, creep, wind about”).
Compare Norwegian snag, snage (“protrusion; projecting point”), Icelandic snagi (“peg”). Also see Dutch snoek (“pike”).
Senses: examples: text: The coat of arms / Now on a naked snag in triumph borne.
ref: 1697, Virgil, “The Ninth Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
synonyms: knot
protuberance
glosses: A stump or base of a branch that has been lopped off; a short branch, or a sharp or rough branch.
glosses: A dead tree that remains standing.
examples: text: ‘A’most used-up I am, I do declare!’ she observed. ‘The jolting in the cars is pretty nigh as bad as if the rail was full of snags and sawyers.’
ref: 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:
text: […]I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims;[…]
ref: 1899 (please specify the page), Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part:
glosses: A tree, or a branch of a tree, fixed in the bottom of a river or other navigable water, and rising nearly or quite to the surface, by which boats are sometimes pierced and sunk.
glosses: Any sharp protuberant part of an object, which may catch, scratch, or tear other objects brought into contact with it.
examples: text: To ſee our Women's Teeth look white. / And ev'ry ſaucy ill-bred Fellow / Sneers at a Mouth profoundly yellow. / In China none hold Women ſweet, / Except their Snags are black as jett.
ref: 1718, Mat[thew] Prior, “Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind”, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: […] Jacob Tonson […], and John Barber […], →OCLC, canto II, page 354:
synonyms: snaggletooth
glosses: A tooth projecting beyond the others; a broken or decayed tooth.
examples: text: we hit a snag
text: The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgment by the parties of the second part's glamour.
ref: 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
text: Scarcity of outstanding content viewed as snag for unproved and highly priced Vision Pro device[.]
ref: 2024 July 13, Tim Bradshaw, Michael Acton, “Apple's headset faces struggle to gain attention of developers and end users”, in FT Weekend, page 12:
synonyms: hitch
glosses: A problem or difficulty with something.
glosses: A pulled thread or yarn, as in cloth.
synonyms: tine
point
glosses: One of the secondary branches of an antler.
Derived terms: hit a snag
snag-boat
snaggy
snaglike
snag list