snail 1 of 2

snail

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verb

as in to drag
to move slowly the highway construction work created a bottleneck that had cars snailing for the next five miles

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of snail
Noun
The president’s willingness to take bold action has set in motion ambitious trade negotiations, which normally proceed at a snail’s pace. Emily Kilcrease, Foreign Affairs, 9 June 2025 The flatworms first infect the snail, then a fish, and finally a warm-blooded vertebrate, like a bird or a human, that consumes the infected fish. City News Service, San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 June 2025
Verb
What can snail mucin do for your skin? Lacey Muinos, Health, 13 Feb. 2023 Davison and the scientists bred the lefty snails together, and over three years, nearly 15,000 eggs were hatched from four generations of snails, including Jeremy. Kristen Rogers, CNN, 2 June 2020 See All Example Sentences for snail
Recent Examples of Synonyms for snail
Noun
  • Pickett said the multiple layers of packaging are vital, since slugs (mollusks, not insects) end up falling into the liquid, and their smell is uniquely bad.
    Madeline Bodin, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 June 2025
  • Unlike most pests, slugs and snails are most active at night or in cool, wet weather.
    Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 25 June 2025
Verb
  • But by the late 1970s, as negotiations over a treaty dragged on, Congress grew receptive to industry lobbyists seeking legislation that would protect their investments in mining sites beyond U.S. maritime jurisdiction.
    Time, Time, 17 June 2025
  • What were the final few days like? Exhausting and dragging on.
    Kate Aurthur, Variety, 17 June 2025
Noun
  • Reddit also has implemented safeguards to block bots and web crawlers from scraping its data.
    Jibin Joseph, PC Magazine, 6 June 2025
  • The community is also developing collaborative tools to help protect against these crawlers.
    Ars Technica, Ars Technica, 25 Mar. 2025
Verb
  • To make the stakes even higher, Player 39 crawls to the edge after the round ends.
    Jennifer Zhan, Vulture, 27 June 2025
  • The next day, at 9:10 p.m., Boelter crawled out of a wooded area and surrendered to law enforcement.
    N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA Today, 27 June 2025
Noun
  • Retired or not, the world’s greatest quarterback does not have the luxury to indulge in sequential action—one thing at a time is for slowpokes and losers.
    Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 25 Jan. 2025
  • One group of 15 female rats, brighter in color than the rest, kept zooming past the others to make it into the houses first, making the rest of their furry colleagues look like slowpokes.
    Laura Bradley, Vulture, 17 Jan. 2025
Verb
  • Soon, Kelli’s voice creeps up a few octaves after Brit calls her insecure, prompting her to lay the glam team drama on the table.
    Ile-Ife Okantah, Vulture, 23 June 2025
  • No Liverpool fan can be anything but glowing in their praise of Robertson in a red shirt, but his powers are waning compared with previous seasons as more defensive mistakes crept into his game last season.
    David Ornstein, New York Times, 20 June 2025
Verb
  • Cunningham came to the defense of her teammate Clark, retaliating with less than a minute left on the clock after, earlier in the game, the Fever's superstar player was poked in the eye and then knocked to the ground by two separate Sun players.
    Ben Verbrugge, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 June 2025
  • As Clark backed Sheldon down at the top of the key, Sheldon poked Clark in the eye.
    Ryan Gaydos, FOXNews.com, 18 June 2025
Noun
  • And some erratic vibrations were detected at points last week as the stark outperformance of year-to-date laggards over the top 2025 performers prompted some comparisons to the nasty momentum-stock reversal of February and March that upset the market well before the tariff panic.
    Michael Santoli, CNBC, 14 June 2025
  • Those dolts and laggards that were holding them back are no longer a boat anchor.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 11 June 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Snail.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/snail. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.

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