Sniggle
verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To chortle or chuckle; snicker. intransitive
"Ay! you see you'll laugh at the bare thought on it — and I'll be bound th' minister, though he's not a laughing man, would ha' sniggled at th' notion of falling in love wi' the child."
- 2 To fish for eels by thrusting a baited needle or hook into their dens. intransitive
"But rampant poaching (the correct term for catching a grown-up eel with bait is to “sniggle”, though elvers are caught with something more like a giant sieve) is now prompting authorities to crack down well in advance of next year’s season."
- 3 To steal something of little value. obsolete
- 4 To catch by this means. transitive
- 5 To ensnare. figuratively, transitive
Example
More examples"Ay! you see you'll laugh at the bare thought on it — and I'll be bound th' minister, though he's not a laughing man, would ha' sniggled at th' notion of falling in love wi' the child."
Etymology
From an alteration (perhaps due to giggle) of snigger, itself a variant of snicker.
See snig (“a kind of eel”) + -le (frequentative verbal suffix).
From snig or an alteration of snag + -le.
More for "sniggle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.