snippet
Americannoun
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snippets
plural
-
a small piece snipped off; a small bit, scrap, or fragment.
an anthology of snippets.
-
Informal. a small or insignificant person.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of snippet
Explanation
A snippet is a tiny piece. You might only have time to read a snippet of "Moby Dick" before your early English class — just enough to know it's a book about a whale. While a snippet can be a literal fragment of something, like a snippet of hair clipped off the end of your dog's tail, the word is often used to talk about less physical bits. You may get a snippet of information by watching TV news with the sound turned off, or end your writing workshop with just a snippet of an idea for your screenplay. It comes from snip, with its Low German root snippen, "to snip or shred."
Vocabulary lists containing snippet
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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The Breadwinner
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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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:
As for the newly unearthed song snippet of John’s, “Little Girl” will intrigue only the most dedicated appreciators of Beatles flotsam.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
The mRNA vaccine and the Oxford vaccine both deliver a snippet of genetic code into the body.
From BBC ● Jun. 1, 2026
Another snippet I overheard in Studio City: “You gotta make music from the heart, man, and the label will feel it.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 25, 2026
“We taxed the rich,” he said in the clip, which references a snippet of the Griffin video.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 2026
She knew this because she’d once seen a snippet of a documentary on television, and when they showed images of Bangladesh, they really looked familiar to her and she couldn’t explain why.
From "Hello, Universe" by Erin Entrada Kelly
“You’re getting little snippets of life, and to experience that with a group of people is really powerful, and a computer can’t replace that.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
On the latest episode of ICYMI, host Kate Lindsay introduces listeners to the phenomenon of vertical microdramas, which are 90-second snippets of content chock-full of some of the most absurd plotlines you’ve ever seen.
From Slate ● Sep. 16, 2026
But the rare snippets of dialogue that underscore these ideas are cringemaking.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Their identities have not been revealed, but snippets of the video with their faces visible continue to circulate online.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
As he talked he wired the block of charcoal firmly to one end of the stone, then began measuring snippets of metal into the hollow in the charcoal.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
