Other forms: snapped, snaps, snapping
Snap is the short hard sound a dry stick makes when it breaks, and the breaking itself. A pencil snaps in your hand, a branch snaps under your boot, the lid of a box snaps shut.
People snap too. Snap at somebody and you answer them sharply because your patience has run out; snap under pressure and something inside gives way. A dog snaps at a wasp, you snap your fingers for the waiter, and a photographer snaps away all afternoon — which is why an old holiday photo is a snap. Add a word and the meanings multiply: snap up a bargain before anyone else gets it, snap out of a black mood, and a cold snap is a few sudden days of frost.
1verbsoundTo break suddenly with a short sharp sound.~20%
“The dry branch snapped under his boot.”
synonyms: crack
2verbspeechTo say something quickly and crossly.~2%
“Sorry — I did not mean to snap at you.”
synonyms: bark
3verbbiteTo bite at something quickly.~10%
“The dog snaps at every fly that comes near.”
4nounstickA short sharp sound, like a stick breaking or fingers clicking.~68%
“The case shut with a snap.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 142 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense (132 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
English took snap from Dutch and Low German snappen, to bite, to seize. Further back the family holds Lithuanian snãpas, a beak — and a beak closing is the picture under every sense the word has now. The noise did the rest: snap was pulled into its present shape by the sound it names.
Dutch
snappen
English, today
snap
Borrowed from Dutch snappen. From Dutch snappen (“to bite; seize”) or Low German snappen (“to bite; seize”), ultimately from Proto-West Germanic snappōn, from Proto-Germanic snappōną (“to snap; snatch; chatter”), intensive form of snapāną ”to snap; grab”, whence Old Norse snapa (“to get; scrounge”), from Proto-Indo-European snep-; compare Lithuanian snãpas (“beak, bill”). (One alternative hypothesis links the Germanic words to snu-, an root deriving words meaning “nose”, “snout”, “sniff” etc., but this is phonetically unsound.) In any case influenced by imitative of the sound; note expressions such as snip-snap, containing the formally unrelated snip. Cognate with West Frisian snappe (“to get; catch; snap”), German schnappen (“to grab”), Swedish snappa (“to snatch”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA