snark

¹ American  

[snahrk] / snɑrk /

noun

1. a mysterious, imaginary animal.

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snark ² American  

[snahrk] / snɑrk /

verb (used without object)

1. to be critical in a rude or sarcastic way.

   to snark about the neighbors.

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noun

1. rude or sarcastic criticism.

Etymology

Origin of snark¹

First recorded in 1876; coined by Lewis Carroll in his poem The Hunting of the Snark

Origin of snark²

First recorded in 1910–15; dialectal snark “to nag, find fault with”; apparently identical with snark, snork “to snort, snore,” probably from Dutch, Low German snorken “to snore”

Example Sentences

Snappiness and snark are hallmarks of his earliest series, but eventually Tartakovsky realized that the barrage of dialogue allowed audiences to understand what was going on without feeling it.

From Salon

You’ll read snark from a body-for-squash nerd in a financial newspaper and think: When did The Wall Street Journal get a sports section?

From The Wall Street Journal

Two hugely popular California wines, Caymus Cabernet and the Bordeaux-style red Opus One, are the targets of a fair amount of snark in r/wine.

From The Wall Street Journal

A stint on the short-lived 1990 series “E.A.R.T.H Force” earned him some light snark from The Times’ then-critic Howard Rosenberg.

From Los Angeles Times

But even if he gets past the built-in anti-California bias among so many voters outside our blessed state, he’s not going to snark his way to the White House.

From Los Angeles Times