snick
Americanverb (used with object)
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snicks,
present (3rd person singular)
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snicked,
past participle, past
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snicking
present participle
-
to cut, snip, or nick.
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to strike sharply.
He snicked the ball with his cue.
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to snap or click (a gun, trigger, etc.).
verb (used without object)
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snicks,
present (3rd person singular)
-
snicked,
past participle, past
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snicking
present participle
noun
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a small cut; nick.
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a click.
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Cricket.
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a glancing blow given to the ball.
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the ball so hit.
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noun
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a small cut; notch
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a knot in thread, etc
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cricket
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a glancing blow off the edge of the bat
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the ball so hit
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verb
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to cut a small corner or notch in (material, etc)
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cricket to hit (the ball) with a snick
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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snicksimple
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snickssimple
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have snickedperfect
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has snickedperfect
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am snickingprogressive
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are snickingprogressive
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is snickingprogressive
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have been snickingperfect progressive
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has been snickingperfect progressive
Past
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snickedsimple
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had snickedperfect
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was snickingprogressive
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were snickingprogressive
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had been snickingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of snick
1550–60; origin uncertain; compare Scots sneck to cut (off ), Old Norse snikka to whittle
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:
Haseeb Hameed's thin snick, Jack Leach bowled shouldering arms, Jonny Bairstow pinned lbw, Joe Root's edged drive, Mark Wood taken in the follow-through and Ollie Robinson snaffled at third slip.
From BBC ● Nov. 19, 2025
It crunches around in the glass, and you can hear its eyes snick in their sockets as it anxiously looks all around your small apartment.
From Slate ● May 30, 2020
It closes with a satisfying snick and has a springiness to it when you open it up.
From The Verge ● Apr. 15, 2019
Moeen Ali strikes, two balls after the drinks break, getting one to drift into Elgar and then spin enough to snick through to Bairstow!
From The Guardian ● Jan. 14, 2016
Then she stepped back into the hallway, and in a moment they heard the snick of a box being slit open.
From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng
Manly Mando thwacks and snicks his way through all opponents while scarcely breaking a sweat.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 21, 2026
They're fluffy and cakey without being too fluffy or too cakey like some snicks.
From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2022
I love the way a makeup compact snicks shut or how a luxury car door closes with a kind of airlock seal or — yes — how a classic Razr flips open.
From The Verge ● Feb. 13, 2020
But the thermal cameras that detect edges are not being used in this World Cup, so small snicks are still almost impossible to detect.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 22, 2011
Jabez ranged up and down till he found a thinner place, and with clean snicks of the handbill revealed the original face of the fence.
From A Diversity of Creatures by Rudyard Kipling
Root snicked it and Morris, who took a blinder earlier to dismiss Cook, couldn’t hang on to a very sharp chance as he dived to his left.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 2, 2016
The stone slipped on between the two trotting sweepers, snicked the two guard stones away and came to rest plunk in the center.
From Time Magazine Archive
The wheelchair rolled slowly toward a blank wall, and an invisible door snicked open just before it arrived.
From Garth and the Visitor by Joseph Wesley
There was a roaring of winds and a crashing of thunders, and the blue-white lightning snicked in and out of the forest or tore sprawling cracks in the sky.
From Bones Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country by Edgar Wallace
Norman spoke a word over the motor's muffled thunder, and Hackett snicked on the electrical radiators.
From Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 by Harry Bates
He can show two flacks of opposed allegiance snicking at each other with unsheathed falsehoods, and trace the exact grimace of the loser.
From Time Magazine Archive
She had woken up at night to escape from a familiar, recurrent dream in which policemen approached her with snicking scissors, wanting to hack off her hair.
From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
The bill-hook was doing nothing, and picking it up I fell to snicking and chopping, with soothing destructiveness, among the briars and ash-saplings.
From Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Martin Ross
Then, Herr Hauptmann," said the Englishman, "since you are a soldier, you and I know what fighting is, and that snipping and snicking at noses is no fighting.
From Bog-Myrtle and Peat Tales Chiefly of Galloway Gathered from the Years 1889 to 1895 by S. R. (Samuel Rutherford) Crockett
"I guess," she said, taking a box of cartridges from the top shelf and snicking open the sealing with a finger nail, "I guess I'd better load this rifle."
From The Rider of Golden Bar by William Patterson White
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.
