Serpent
name, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A snake, especially a large or dangerous one. literary
"He falls into it, who has digg'd a Pit. Who breaks a Hedge is with a Serpent bit."
- 2 limbless scaly elongate reptile; some are venomous wordnet
- 3 A subtle, treacherous, malicious person. figuratively
"He is a very serpent in my way."
- 4 an obsolete bass cornet; resembles a snake wordnet
- 5 An obsolete wind instrument in the brass family, whose shape is suggestive of a snake (Wikipedia article).
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- 6 a firework that moves in serpentine manner when ignited wordnet
- 7 A kind of firework with a serpentine motion.
- 8 A snake-like monster, such as a dragon or sea serpent.
"Then Beowulf too rallied. With his whetted dagger he slit a gash in the serpent's middle."
- 1 To wind or meander intransitive, obsolete
- 2 To encircle. obsolete, transitive
"fruit-trees, whose boles are serpented with excellent vines"
- 1 Synonym of Serpens (a constellation).
- 2 Synonym of Satan. figuratively
"Quin, with the wisdom of the serpent, called for more drinks."
Example
More examples"It had the head of a woman, the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a serpent."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *serp- Proto-Indo-European *sérpeti Proto-Italic *serpō Proto-Italic *serpents Latin serpēns Old French serpentbor. Middle English serpent English serpent From Middle English serpent, from Old French serpent (“snake, serpent”), from Latin serpēns (“snake”), present active participle of serpere (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-Italic *serpō, from Proto-Indo-European *serp-. In this sense, displaced native Old English nǣdre (“snake, serpent”), whence Modern English adder. Compare Sanskrit सर्प (sarpa, “snake”), which is a descendant of the same Proto-Indo-European word as serpent.
Related phrases
More for "serpent"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.