snipe

UK/snaɪp/US/snaɪp/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,626 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: snipes

A snipe is a marsh bird with a very long straight bill. Flush a snipe, a snipe in the reeds, hunt snipe.

It is famously hard to shoot because it flies away in a fast zigzag, which is where the word sniper comes from: a sniper was originally somebody good enough to hit one. To snipe at somebody is to attack them with small remarks from cover.

Definitions of snipe

1nounsnipeA marsh bird with a very long straight bill.C1
“A snipe rose from the marsh and zigzagged away over the reeds.”

snipe is a bird.

Where it comes from

Old Norse snipa names the bird. Sniper comes from the difficulty of shooting one.

Old Norse
snípa
Middle English
snipe
English, today
snipe

Built from

snype · Middle English — a type of bird
mýrisnípa · Old Norse — moor snipe

From Middle English snipe, snype (“a type of bird”), from Old Norse snípa, as in mýrisnípa (“moor snipe”). Akin to Norwegian snipe.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Birds

Practise this word

snipe in the wild

Although the snipe is a real bird, a snipe hunt is a quest for a nonexistent creature whose description varies.
Snipe hunt
As an American rite of passage, snipe hunting is often associated with summer camps and similar outdoor activities.
Snipe hunt
A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae.
Snipe
The three species of painted-snipes are not closely related to the typical snipes, and are placed in their own family, the Rostratulidae.
Snipe
The genus name is Latin for a snipe or woodcock, and until around 1800 was used to refer to a variety of waders.
Woodcock

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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.

Related words

the snípa family

sniper

snipe — used about once every 9,395 pages · #11,626 · point at the bar for the others

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