snark

snark

See also: Snark and snȧrk

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: snärk, IPA^(key): /snɑː(ɹ)k/

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)k

Etymology 1

Noun sense “snide remark” as back-formation from snarky (1906), from obsolete snark (“to snore, snort”, verb) (1866), from Middle English *snarken (“to snore”), equivalent to snore +‎ -k. Compare Low German snarken, North Frisian snarke, Swedish snarka, and English snort, and snore.[1] Of Germanic origin, but ultimately onomatopoeic.

Noun

snark (uncountable)

1. Snide remarks or attitude.

   Synonyms: sarcasm, snideness

   • 2010, David Denby, Snark, Pan Macmillan, →ISBN, page 4:

     Snark will get you any way it can, fore and aft, and to hell with consistency. In a media society, snark is an easy way of seeming smart. […] Snark doesn't create a new image, a new idea. It's parasitic, referential, insinuating.

   • 2017, Dean Koontz, The Silent Corner, page 54:

     She liked his smile. There was neither snark nor megalomania in it, as characterized so many smiles these days.

Related terms

• snarkiness
• snarky

Verb

snark (third-person singular simple present snarks, present participle snarking, simple past and past participle snarked)

1. To express oneself in a snarky fashion.
   • 2009 January 23, Dwight Garner, “The Mahvelous and the Damned”, in New York Times‎:

     Other would-be Bright Young People, Lytton Strachey snarked, seemed to have “just a few feathers where brains should be.”

   • 2018, Maria Maggenti, Daniel Beaty, “Fallout”, in Supergirl, season 4, episode 2, spoken by Querl Dox (Jesse Rath):

     Ah! That was "snark". You snark when your blood sugar is low. I know how to help you. Pizza. Humans seem to find calm in the consumption of food.

2. (obsolete) To snort.

Derived terms

• snarker

Etymology 2

From Snark, coined by Lewis Carroll as a nonce word in The Hunting of the Snark (1874), about the quest for an elusive creature. In sense of “a type of mathematical graph”, named as such in 1976 by Martin Gardner for their elusiveness.[2]

Noun

snark (plural snarks)

1. (literary) The fictional creature of Lewis Carroll's poem, used allusively to refer to fruitless quest or search.
   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 345:

     When the auctioneer had exhausted his vocabulary in describing the merits of an animal, his winding-up formula was "One times! two times! three times!" Then the hammer gave a tap, and he and our party would devote our energies to discovering the last bidder - a research which generally was as promising as the hunting of the snark.

   • 2019, Karl Schroeder, Stealing Worlds‎:

     Remy said Dad was hunting snarks; at the time, she'd thought it was a euphemism.

2. (mathematics) A graph in which every node has three branches, and the edges cannot be coloured in fewer than four colours without two edges of the same colour meeting at a point.
3. (physics) A fluke or unrepeatable result or detection in an experiment.

   Cabrera's Valentine's Day monopole detection or some extremely energetic cosmic rays could be examples of snarks.

Further reading

• snark on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Snark (Lewis Carroll) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “snark”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• snark at OneLook Dictionary Search

References

1. Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “snarky”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. Martin Gardner, (1976). Mathematical Games. Scientific American, volume 4, issue 234, pages 126–130.

Anagrams

• ARNKs, Karns, Kršan, Kṛṣṇa, karns, knars, krans, narks, ranks, skarn

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Icelandic

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /stnar̥k/
• Rhymes: -ar̥k

Noun

snark n (genitive singular snarks, no plural)

1. crackle (of a fire)

Declension

declension of snark

n-s	singular
	indefinite	definite
nominative	snark	snarkið
accusative	snark	snarkið
dative	snarki	snarkinu
genitive	snarks	snarksins

Related terms

• snarka (“to crackle”)

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Swedish

Etymology

Deverbal from snarka.

Interjection

snark

1. zzz (representing a snoring sound)

   Synonym: (in writing) zzz

2. (slang) An expression of boredom

   Synonym: (in writing) zzz

   Snark! ― Boring!

Noun

snark n

1. the act of snoring, and the noise produced

Declension

Declension of snark
	Singular		Plural
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Nominative	snark	snarket	snark	snarken
Genitive	snarks	snarkets	snarks	snarkens

Derived terms

• snarkofag

Related terms

• snarka (“to snore”)

References

• snark in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
• snark in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)

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Westrobothnian

Etymology

From snórk. Cognate with Smalandian snarke m, Helsingian snárse, snarkse m, snarka f, Norwegian snerkje m.

Noun

snark m (nominative & accusative definite singular snarken)

1. Skin, wrinkled skin-film which forms on porridge and gruel.
2. Cream.

Alternative forms

• snȧrk