snick
Americanverb (used with object)
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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)
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:
Off Anderson's bowling, Labuschagne offered a regulation snick from a back-foot drive only for Buttler to spill the ball at a comfortable height moving to his right.
From BBC ● Dec. 16, 2021
It snaps on the back of a caseless iPhone with a satisfying snick.
From The Verge ● Jul. 23, 2021
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
He threw everything at a full ball slanted across him that didn't swing back in, but it was just too wide and he could only snick it through to Akmal.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 27, 2010
Gitl made a small snick of annoyance between her teeth and wiped up the spill with the edge of her apron.
From "The Devil's Arithmetic" by Jane Yolen
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 Kipling, Rudyard
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
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
He snicked his first ball for a single, bringing the novelist to the fore again, and Samuel Wilberforce Gosling vowed a vow that he would dismiss that distinguished novelist.
From A Prefect's Uncle by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
He once had been a famous bat, He had that stroke, "the Manor-pat," Which snicked the ball for three, past cover.
From Reynard the Fox by Masefield, John
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
"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 White, William Patterson
The sun has gained great power, and on still bright days sharp snicking sounds are to be heard from the firs.
From Wood and Garden Notes and thoughts, practical and critical, of a working amateur by Jekyll, Gertrude
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 Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
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.
