| / English Dictionary |
SNAIL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Freshwater or marine or terrestrial gastropod mollusk usually having an external enclosing spiral shell
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("snail" is a kind of...):
gastropod; univalve (a class of mollusks typically having a one-piece coiled shell and flattened muscular foot with a head bearing stalked eyes)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "snail"):
scorpion shell (any of numerous tropical marine snails that as adults have the outer lip of the aperture produced into a series of long curved spines)
edible snail; Helix pomatia (one of the chief edible snails)
garden snail (any of several inedible snails of the genus Helix; often destructive pests)
Derivation:
snail (gather snails)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Edible terrestrial snail usually served in the shell with a sauce of melted butter and garlic
Synonyms:
escargot; snail
Classified under:
Nouns denoting foods and drinks
Hypernyms ("snail" is a kind of...):
meat (the flesh of animals (including fishes and birds and snails) used as food)
Holonyms ("snail" is a substance of...):
edible snail; Helix pomatia (one of the chief edible snails)
Derivation:
snail (gather snails)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Gather snails
Example:
We went snailing in the summer
Classified under:
Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging
Hypernyms (to "snail" is one way to...):
collect; garner; gather; pull together (assemble or get together)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "snail"):
whelk (gather whelk)
Sentence frames:
Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP
Sentence example:
In the summer they like to go out and snail
Derivation:
snail (freshwater or marine or terrestrial gastropod mollusk usually having an external enclosing spiral shell)
snail (edible terrestrial snail usually served in the shell with a sauce of melted butter and garlic)
Context examples:
Nor was that all, for crawling together on flat tables of rock or letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports I beheld huge slimy monsters—soft snails, as it were, of incredible bigness—two or three score of them together, making the rocks to echo with their barkings.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
But this species, Olea hensoni, has gone rogue, joining two other sacoglossan species – Olea hansineensis in the northeast Pacific Ocean and Calliopaea bellula in the Mediterranean Sea – that abandoned a diet of seaweed to prey on the eggs of their fellow slugs and snails.
(New sea slug species discovered near condominiums of Florida’s Cedar Key, National Science Foundation)
This snail species is nature's best host and can be found everywhere in Brazil where schistosomiasis is reported, due to its distribution and susceptibility to the parasite.
(Scientists sequence genome of snail linked to schistosomiasis, Agência Brasil)
When I attempted to catch any of these birds, they would boldly turn against me, endeavouring to peck my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned, to hunt for worms or snails, as they did before.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Making its genome available to the scientific community will help researchers work with the genes in this genome and control the snail, so it can become resistant to the infection of the Schistosoma mansoni, which carries the disease.
(Scientists sequence genome of snail linked to schistosomiasis, Agência Brasil)
They observed by my teeth, which they viewed with great exactness, that I was a carnivorous animal; yet most quadrupeds being an overmatch for me, and field mice, with some others, too nimble, they could not imagine how I should be able to support myself, unless I fed upon snails and other insects, which they offered, by many learned arguments, to evince that I could not possibly do.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, and began laboriously and methodically to plod over the same tedious ground at a snail's pace; stopping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on all sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these elusive characters by sight wherever I met them.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
A group of 118 researchers from 11 countries—15 of whom from Brazil—working at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Minas Gerais (Fiocruz Minas), finished sequencing the genome of the Biomphalaria glabrata, the snail that acts as the intermediary host to the worm that causes schistosomiasis.
(Scientists sequence genome of snail linked to schistosomiasis, Agência Brasil)
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