cottonmouth

[ kot-n-mouth ]

noun

, plural cot·ton·mouths [kot, -n-mouths, -mou, th, z].

1. a venomous snake, Agkistrodon ( Ancistrodon ) piscivorus, of swamps in southeastern U.S., that grows to about 4 feet (1.2 meters).

cottonmouth

/ ˈkɒtənˌmaʊθ /

noun

1. another name for the water moccasin

Word History and Origins

Origin of cottonmouth¹

1825–35, Americanism; cotton + mouth, so called from the whiteness of its lips and mouth

Example Sentences

Her second young-adult novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, is a coming-of-age fantasy-thriller that flips between the perspective of an asexual teenage Lipan Apache girl and a cottonmouth snake.

From Time

But then, mysteriously, they all contracted strange ailments: cottonmouth, headaches, and severe dehydration.

From The Daily Beast

When suddenly approached the moccasin opens wide its white-lined mouth, and one then understands why it is called cottonmouth.

From Project Gutenberg

Joe Harmon was small and stout, a little round man with bushy eyebrows and the flabby face of a cottonmouth snake.

From Project Gutenberg

The named, American kinds of Agkistrodon currently are arranged as three species: the copperhead, the cantil and the cottonmouth.

From Project Gutenberg

All are of late Pleistocene Age and well within the present geographic range of the cottonmouth.

From Project Gutenberg

The average for the eastern cottonmouth obtained by Gloyd and Conant, however, was 137 ventrals in both sexes.

From Project Gutenberg