snipe
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: government
hobbies
ice-hockey
lifestyle
military
naval
navy
politics
skating
sports
war
Etymology: From Middle English snipe, snype (a type of bird), from Old Norse snípa, as in mýrisnípa (“moor snipe”). Akin to Norwegian snipe.
The verb originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India where a hunter skilled enough to kill the elusive snipe was dubbed a "sniper". The term sniper was first attested in 1824 in the sense of the word "sharpshooter".
Inflected forms:
form: snipes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: snipe
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: snipes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: sniping
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: sniped
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: sniped
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: Any of various limicoline game birds of the genera Gallinago, Lymnocryptes and Coenocorypha in the family Scolopacidae, having a long, slender, nearly straight beak.
pos: noun
gloss: A fool; a blockhead.
pos: noun
examples: For I mine own gained knowledge should profane,/ If I would time expend with such a snipe,/ But for my sport and profit.
gloss: A shot fired from a concealed place.
pos: noun
gloss: A member of the engineering department on a ship.
pos: noun
tags: slang
gloss: A goal.
pos: noun
tags: slang
gloss: To hunt snipe.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The pleasures of Bay bird shooting should not be spoken of in the same sentence with cocking or sniping.
gloss: To shoot at individuals from a concealed place.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To shoot with a sniper rifle.
pos: verb
tags: broadly
intransitive
gloss: To watch a timed online auction and place a winning bid against (the current high bidder) at the last possible moment.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: I am the type who is liable to snipe you
With two seconds left to go, whoa.
Tip: Adding a few cents to your maximum bid is particularly effective when you're sniping. (..) Last-second bidding is called sniping, and 15 percent of all eBay auctions are won within the last minute.
Sniping is the process of placing bids in the closing minutes or seconds of an auction. Snipers do this to avoid bidding wars that escalate the bids to more than they want to pay.
The successful sniper makes one bid only—and makes it count. Sniping happens on eBay because the end time of each auction is rigidly enforced. If you know that an auction ends at 12:01:30, you can time your snipe to hit at 12:01:29, leaving no time for any other bidders to trump your bid.
gloss: To nose (a log) to make it drag or slip easily in skidding.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To score a goal.
pos: verb
tags: slang
gloss: To move the ball quickly in a different direction.
pos: verb
examples: The breakthrough duly arrived after 35 minutes, an absolute beauty of a team goal scored by Lozano. First Khedira was robbed deep in the Mexico half. Hernández sniped away from Jérôme Boateng and Mats Hummels. A flurry of skimmed passes across the wide-open spaces of the Germany defence left Lozano in space in the area. With the stadium howling for him to shoot he cut inside Özil, who had tracked back to right-back, and buried the ball past Neuer.
Related words: snipe hunt
Derived words: Australian painted snipe
common snipe
great snipe
guttersnipe
jacksnipe
muck-snipe
nerd snipe
nerd-snipe
painted snipe
painted-snipe
pin-tailed snipe
pool snipe
robin snipe
sea snipe
seedsnipe
shore snipe
snipebill
snipe eel
snipefish
snipe fly
snipe hunt
snipelike
snipey
stone-snipe
whole snipe
Wilson's snipe
sniper
snipingly
stream snipe
Translations: