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
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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)
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snicks,
present (3rd person singular)
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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
One was the splash of something heavy falling into the water; the other was a noise like the snick of a lock when a door quietly closes fast.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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
The sixth ball snicks off his edge through third slip, and Cook whips his head around in panic to see if he has been spared.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 9, 2010
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
On its way it snicked a neat little chip out of a chair-back.
From Jaffery by William John Locke
Mild youths with spectacles leaped out of their ground like tigers, and snicked fours through the slips.
From The Politeness of Princes and Other School Stories by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
“No, master, if my head had been snicked off I couldn’t ha’ bin here.”
From The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit by Richard Harris
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
A batsman certainly gets a considerable amount of innocent fun by snicking good fast balls just off his wicket to the ropes, and standing stolidly in front against slow leg-breaks.
From Tales of St. Austin's by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse
Calculations were made how to cut the stuff to advantage, and in due course the heavy scissors were heard snick, snick, snicking all day long.
From Hard Cash by Charles Reade
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
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.
