Other forms: sniveling, snivelling
To snivel is to cry and sniff in a weak self-pitying way. Stop snivelling, snivelling coward, snivel about it.
It is always contemptuous — nobody sympathetic is described as snivelling — and it carries the sound of the nose as much as the crying. The Old English behind it is about mucus, which is exactly the picture.
1verbsnivelTo cry and sniff in a weak self-pitying way.
“Stop snivelling and tell me what happened.”
snivel is a way of crying.
Old English snyflan is related to snot and sniff, from a Germanic root about mucus.
Proto-West Germanic
*snuflijan
Old English
*snyflan
Middle English
snivelen
English, today
snivel
Built from
From Middle English snivelen, snevelen, snyvelen, snuvelen, from Old English snyflan (attested in the verbal noun snyflung (“mucus”)), from Proto-West Germanic snuflijan, related to Old English snofl (“mucus”), ultimately from the root of snout. Akin to sniff, snuff. Compare snifflepiecewise doublet?. Cognate with Middle Low German snuffelen, snüffelen (“to sniff, smell”), Danish snøvle (“to sniffle, snivel”), Norwegian Nynorsk snuvla (“to sniffle, snivel”), Swedish snövla (“to sniffle, snivel”). Compare typologically сопе́ть, сопля́ akinness.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire