snippet
Americannoun
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snippets
plural
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a small piece snipped off; a small bit, scrap, or fragment.
an anthology of snippets.
-
Informal. a small or insignificant person.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of snippet
Explanation
A snippet is a tiny piece. You might only have time to read a snippet of "Moby Dick" before your early English class — just enough to know it's a book about a whale. While a snippet can be a literal fragment of something, like a snippet of hair clipped off the end of your dog's tail, the word is often used to talk about less physical bits. You may get a snippet of information by watching TV news with the sound turned off, or end your writing workshop with just a snippet of an idea for your screenplay. It comes from snip, with its Low German root snippen, "to snip or shred."
Vocabulary lists containing snippet
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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The Breadwinner
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In Covid, the letter being delivered was a snippet of genetic code from the Covid virus.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
The theme song from “Titanic” wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card, but the employee running the game played a snippet and joked, “That’s all we’re allowed to pay on a cruise ship for safety reasons.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 3, 2026
The mRNA vaccine and the Oxford vaccine both deliver a snippet of genetic code into the body.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
One snippet seems to be an episode on Elisa Lam, the real-life tourist found dead in the rooftop water tank of Los Angeles’ Cecil Hotel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 11, 2026
Brief snippet of talent show TV in the background, the final round, crowd roaring.
From "Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
But the rare snippets of dialogue that underscore these ideas are cringemaking.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Dettol said the advert, which has been removed following the backlash, was intended to criticise gender stereotypes, but that snippets of it that later circulated online distorted its core message.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2026
We’re forced to hear endless snippets of it, too, although the full lyrics are saved for the end when we discover that one of songwriters clumsily shoved in the word “albatross.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 28, 2026
OpenAI has said those snippets were cherry-picked and presented out of context, but the judge still quoted them in her ruling that cleared the way for a trial.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 9, 2026
Katherine listened carefully to everything the engineers said, strained for snippets of conversation, and devoured Aviation Week like a kid reading the funny papers.
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
