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.
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 Mueller, A.
The bite of a cobra or other colubrine poisonous snake is more painful in its immediate effects than is the bite of one of the big vipers.
From Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Roosevelt, Theodore
But the effect of the venom of the poisonous colubrine snakes is totally different from, although to the full as deadly as, the effect of the poison of the rattlesnake or jararaca.
From Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Roosevelt, Theodore
Most of the colubrine snakes are entirely harmless, and are the common snakes that we meet everywhere.
From Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Roosevelt, Theodore
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 Hudson, W. H. (William Henry)
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.
