snib
Americannoun
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a bolt, catch, lock, or fastening on a door or window.
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the catch that holds the bolt on a lock.
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Etymology
Origin of snib
First recorded in 1800–10; of uncertain origin; perhaps from Low German snibbe ( German Schnippe ), Swedish snibb “beak, point”
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:
The door was aff the snib; an', keep me, when I lookit in, here's Sandy wi' an Oddfella's kilt an' a bushbie on, an' his ilky-day's claes lyin' in a pozel on the table.
From My Man Sandy by J. B. Salmond
Monica closed it gently down, and fastened the snib.
From Beyond the City by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Mr. Bolton, after his interview with the woman, would of course snib the window, and pull down the blind.
From The Green Mummy by Fergus Hume
There is another sn which may perhaps be derived from the Latin sinuo, as snake, sneak, snail, snare; so likewise snap and snatch, snib, snub.
From A Grammar of the English Tongue by Samuel Johnson
The snib was an old one, and he yanked a piece of string round it, and passed the string through the crack between the upper and lower sash of the window.
From The Green Mummy by Fergus Hume
“Manny’s the toime Oi’ve snibbed a latch loike that in Oireland,” she said, and she smiled so hard that her very wrinkles seemed to twinkle.
From Maida's Little Shop by Inez Haynes Gillmore
And it's impossible the man can have opened a snibbed windie and got in, with some one sitting in the room, and no alarm given.
From Simon by J. Storer (Joseph Storer) Clouston
Shut, sir; and the most extraordinary thing was that it was snibbed too!
From Simon by J. Storer (Joseph Storer) Clouston
And schewed welles of watres ware, And groundes of ertheli world unhiled are, For thi snibbing, Laverd myne; For onesprute of gast of wreth thine.
From English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day by Walter W. (Walter William) Skeat
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.
