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snail

UK/sneɪl/US/sneɪl/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,332 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: snails

A snail is a very slow small animal that carries a round shell. A garden snail, snail shells, at a snail's pace.

The shell is part of the animal and grows with it, so a snail cannot leave it or change it. It moves on a single muscular foot along a trail of mucus that lets it cross a razor blade unharmed. Snail mail is post, named against email.

Geierunited · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of snail

  1. 1nounsnailA slow small animal with a round shell.C1

    “A snail left a silvery trail across the garden path.”

snail is an animal.

Where it comes from

Old English snegel names the animal, from a Germanic root related to a word for creeping. Slug is a relative of the same family of words.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *snagilaz

  2. Old English

    sneġel

  3. Middle English

    snayl

  4. English, today

    snail

From Middle English snayl, snail, from the Old English sneġel, from Proto-Germanic snagilaz. Cognate with Low German Snagel, Snâel, Snâl (“snail”), German Schnegel (“slug”). Compare also Old Norse snigill, from Proto-Germanic snigilaz.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Animals

Practise this word

snail in the wild

  • Muricidae is a large and varied taxonomic family of small to large predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks, commonly known as murex snails or rock snails.

    Muricidae

  • Perhaps the best-known edible land snail species in the Western world is Helix pomatia, commonly known as the Roman snail or the Burgundy snail.

    Heliciculture

  • In tropical climates, snail farming is typically done with the African snail.

    Heliciculture

  • Outside of its native range, this snail thrives in many types of habitat with mild climates.

    Lissachatina fulica

  • Most of the non-pulmonate land snails belong to lineages in the Caenogastropoda, and tend to have a gill and an operculum.

    Land snail

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.