colubrine
Americanadjective
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of or resembling a snake; snakelike.
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belonging or pertaining to the subfamily Colubrinae, comprising the typical colubrid snakes.
adjective
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of or resembling a snake
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of, relating to, or belonging to the Colubrinae, a subfamily of harmless colubrid snakes
Etymology
Origin of colubrine
1520–30; < Latin colubrīnus, equivalent to colubr- (stem of coluber ) snake + -īnus -ine 1
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.
It looked to me like a coronelia—harmless colubrine snakes—but was more than twice as large as either of the two species of that genus I was already familiar with.
From The Naturalist in La Plata by W. H. (William Henry) Hudson
Most of the colubrine snakes are entirely harmless, and are the common snakes that we meet everywhere.
From Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt
Feoktistow's experiments, made with viper poison, fully bear out the correctness of the writer's theory, besides proving that there is no essential difference between the action of the viperine and colubrine poisons.
From On Snake-Poison: its Action and its Antidote by A. Mueller
Catalogue of colubrine snakes in the collection of the British Museum.
From A Revision of Snakes of the Genus Conophis (Family Colubridae, from Middle America) by John Wellman
Natrix, nā′triks, n. a genus of colubrine snakes.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various
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.
