Other forms: snarling, snarls, snarled
To snarl is to growl while showing the teeth. The dog snarled, a snarling face, snarl a reply.
The teeth are the point: a snarl is a warning display as much as a sound. Applied to a person it means speaking with angry contempt. There is a separate snarl meaning a tangle — snarled up in traffic, a snarl of wire — which comes from snare and is the older word. Note traffic snarl-up, which is British.
1verbsnarlTo growl while showing the teeth.
“The guard dog snarled at us through the fence.”
2nountangleA tangle or blockage.
“The cars sat in a snarl of traffic at the junction for an hour.”
snarl is a growl, or a tangle.
Middle English snarlen is a frequentative of snaren, to tangle, from snare. The growling sense is separate and imitative, and the two have run together.
Middle English
snarlen
English, today
snarl
Built from
From Middle English snarlen, frequentative of snaren (“to trap, tangle”). Equivalent to snare + le.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA