View synonyms for snail

snail

[ sneyl ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

any mollusk of the class Gastropoda, having a spirally coiled shell and a ventral muscular foot on which it slowly glides about.
a slow or lazy person; sluggard.
Machinery. a cam having the form of a spiral.
Midwestern and Western U.S. a sweet roll in spiral form, especially a cinnamon roll or piece of Danish pastry.

snail

/ sneɪl /

any of numerous terrestrial or freshwater gastropod molluscs with a spirally coiled shell, esp any of the family Helicidae, such as Helix aspersa ( garden snail )
any other gastropod with a spirally coiled shell, such as a whelk
a slow-moving or lazy person or animal

Origin of snail¹

before 900; Middle English snail, snayl ( e ), Old English snegel; cognate with Low German snagel, German (dial.) Schnegel

Origin of snail¹

Old English snægl; related to Old Norse snigill, Old High German snecko

Most days, I might as well be studying some obscure species of sea snail.

The Daily Pic: James Nares slows Manhattan's rat race to a snail's pace.

The way to understand memory processing is not through Marcel Proust, as Kandel discovered in the 1960s, but through a sea snail.

The green damp hung upon the low walls, and the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light; but all was still as death.

They were well-to-do folk and, according to Cesar Birotteau who knew them, old man Crottat was as "close as a snail."

As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass away, like the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.

Aye, there it was, slowly winding up the steep white road, on which it seemed to move at a snail's pace.

And in some respects that something that looked so very much like a railway resembled not so much a snail as a snake.

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