snail

1 of 2

noun

1
: a gastropod mollusk especially when having an external enclosing spiral shell
2
: a slow-moving or sluggish person or thing
snaillike adjective

snail

2 of 2

verb

snailed; snailing; snails

intransitive verb

: to move, act, or go slowly or lazily

Examples of snail in a Sentence

Noun go and tell the snails in the back to hurry up Verb the highway construction work created a bottleneck that had cars snailing for the next five miles
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Five days after beating Arizona on its home court, USC was outplaying the Wildcats again with sticky defense and a snail’s pace that favored the Trojans. Houston Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2024 Slugs are mostly nocturnal, while snails feed 24-7. Paul Richards, Field & Stream, 29 Feb. 2024 As a generational business, change often moves at a snail’s pace in the wine industry. Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 27 Feb. 2024 In the 1987 film 84 Charing Cross Road, a transatlantic transaction between a lover of books and a bookseller was snail’s pace slow as letters crossed the oceans, checks, and so on. John Tamny, Forbes, 27 Feb. 2024 The German composer has a big reputation for grand titles that unfold at a snail’s pace. Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Denver Post, 6 Feb. 2024 Apparently when a homemade snail shell isn’t available, a store bought chunk of plastic will do. Popsci Staff, Popular Science, 28 Feb. 2024 Real snail mucin is clear and applies like a thick gel. Chaunie Brusie, Rn, Parents, 26 Feb. 2024 The mucin and secretion filtrate does come from the snails, but there’s also more to it. Alyssa Grabinski, Peoplemag, 10 Feb. 2024
Verb
Movement components reveal classical decoration, including Côtes de Genève, beveling, and snailing. Nancy Olson, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2024 Could snail slime and salmon sperm be the next big things in skincare? Leslie Baumann, Miami Herald, 26 Jan. 2024 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 Cathy Jordan may die as this snails its way through the system. Dara Kam, Sun-Sentinel.com, 3 July 2018 The investigators found that hungry caterpillars, which usually gorge on tomato leaves, had no appetite for them after the plants were exposed to snail slime and activated their chemical resistance. Erica Tennenhouse, Scientific American, 13 Apr. 2018 Payments for premiums still cannot be processed online - people have to snail-mail checks to a CGI processor in Nebraska. Lynnley Browning, Newsweek, 6 Feb. 2014 Ten minutes of the second half snailed by without anything more exciting happening than Ryan Bertrand missing a two-yard pass to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. SI.com, 5 Oct. 2017

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'snail.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun

Middle English, from Old English snægl; akin to Old High German snecko snail, snahhan to creep

First Known Use

Noun

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Verb

1582, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of snail was before the 12th century

Dictionary Entries Near snail

Cite this Entry

“Snail.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snail. Accessed 28 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

snail

noun
ˈsnā(ə)l
1
: any of numerous small mollusks that are gastropods usually with a spiral shell and that include some living on land and others living in water
2
: a slow-moving person or thing

Medical Definition

snail

noun
: any of various gastropod mollusks and especially those having an external enclosing spiral shell including some which are important in medicine as intermediate hosts of trematodes

More from Merriam-Webster on snail

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