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Snag   /snæg/   Listen
Snag

noun
1.
A sharp protuberance.
2.
A dead tree that is still standing, usually in an undisturbed forest.
3.
An opening made forcibly as by pulling apart.  Synonyms: rent, rip, split, tear.  "She had snags in her stockings"
4.
An unforeseen obstacle.  Synonyms: hang-up, hitch, rub.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Snag" Quotes from Famous Books



... floated under the arching moss and vines that trailed from the trees on the bank. Now and then a snag would be struck, and on such occasions Ruth would start nervously, and ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... these is attended with danger, and the pilot avoids them. Sometimes one swimming below the surface escapes his eye; and then a heavy bumping against the bows shakes the boat, and startles the equanimity of the less experienced passengers. The "snag" is most dreaded. That is a dead tree with heavy roots still adhering. These, from their weight, have settled upon the bottom, and the debris gathering around holds them firmly imbedded. The lighter top, riven of its branches, rises towards the surface; but the pressure ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... carried in the original sacks; they wet through or absorb moisture from the air, snag easily, and burst under the strain of a lashrope. Pack your flour, cereals, vegetables, dried fruits, etc., in the round-bottomed paraffined bags sold by outfitters (various sizes, from 10 lbs. down), which are damp-proof and have the further merit of standing up on their bottoms instead of ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... "Perhaps a snag tossing in the motion of the water,—at all events, you can't say there was no water." Dr. Rigdon glanced at Gordon ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... paddle, but the current remained swift and the speed of the canoe was not slackened. The young Onondaga devoted most of his time to watching. Much wreckage from storms or the suction of flood water often floated on the surface of these wild rivers, and his keen eyes searched for trunk or bough or snag. They also scanned at intervals the green walls speeding by on either side, lest they might pass some camp fire and not notice it, but finding no lighter note in the darkness he felt sure that no ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... a snag when he appealed to the National Kansas Committee for a gift of rifles and an appropriation of five thousand dollars. They voted the rifles on conditions. But a violent opposition developed against giving five thousand ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... burned. He was eminently conservative, and looked with wary suspicion on anything that appeared like earnestness. In the midst of a driving, bustling Western city, he stuck in the mud of his German phlegm, like a snag in the swift current of the Mississippi. Yet Mr. Ludolph found him a most valuable assistant. He kept things straight. Under his minute supervision everything had to be right on Saturday night as well as on ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... it up street, with a hop, skip and a jump. Won't I make Old Bull stare, when he finds his head under my coat tails, and me jist makin' a lever of him? He'll think he has run foul of a snag, I know. Lord, I'll shack right over their heads, as they do over a colonist; only when they do, they never say warny wunst, cuss 'em, they arn't civil enough for that. They arn't paid for it—there is no parquisite to be got by it. Won't I tuck in the Champaine ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the corps have struck a snag out here west of Benton. It's a bad place. You an' Henney were west in the hills when this survey was made. It's a deep wash—bad grade an' curves. The gang's stuck. An' Baxter swore, 'We've got to have ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... a quiet loaf, the party sped homeward with the current, handling rods and trolls as salmon and bass demanded lively attention. Shooting a rapid, and out into a deep pool at its foot, the Doctor's boat struck a snag, and he, having a resisting power equal to that of a billiard-ball, put his heels where his head had been, and disappeared under the water, to pop up again instantly, sputtering and spitting, like a jug full of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... used to run up against a serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time I thought I was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could never get away from the impression that he really appeared happy when he ran up against a serious snag. That was in my green days, and I soon learned that the failure of an experiment never discourages him unless it is by reason of the carelessness of the man making it. Then Edison gets disgusted. If it fails on its merits, he ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... his death at every stride of his horse. And down the road they raced, till they saw by the loom of the open bush where the boundary fences ceased. The leader turned his horse in his stride, and the four behind turned theirs. A fallen log; a rut; a snag; and one rider's race would be done; for the pace they were going left no escape if once a horse came down. Through the low-grown brush they crashed. A rider ducked to miss a branch that was level with ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... logs had caught on a snag of rock, and the river was bringing down more logs every minute to complete the blockade. The water snarled and wrenched and worried at the timber, while the population of the state prodded at the nearest logs with poles, in the hope of easing the pressure. Then there went up a shout of "Namgay Doola! ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here that love's young dream hits a snag, and things ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... behind a benevolent scheme to build a hospital, to be under the auspices of the church society, and to it devoted not a little time and energy. When the constitution and by-laws were drawn up, the more liberal of the trustees struck a snag in old 'Lige. He was bound that the hospital should not harbor people under the influence of liquor, or fallen women. 'Lige was very bitter against prostitution. "It is the curse of civilization," he often said. "Prostitutes ruin ten men where whiskey ruins one. They stand in the ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... Ikmin river. A hook was fastened in the end of a bamboo pole, and close to this a minnow was attached to a short line, to act as a lure. When the other fish approached the captive, the pole was jerked sharply, in an attempt to snag them. On one occasion the writer saw fifty fish taken by this method in less than ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... innumerable unseen mouths. But there was no wind astir; and the brown-black, glistening current beneath the white folds was glassy smooth save where the occasional big swirls boiled up with a swishing gurgle, or the running wave broke musically around an upthrust shoulder of rock or a weedy snag. The river was not wide—not more than fifty yards from bank to bank; but from the birch canoe slipping quietly down along one shore, just outside the fringe of alder branches, the opposite shore was absolutely hidden. There was nothing ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... is there to go wrong? I've got a big day in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to your dinner and have a ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... to the car and pulled out the rail. It was the one they had ripped from the ties north of Calhoun. They forced the straight end of it under the track, leaving the bent end projecting toward the pursuers—a scarcely visible snag which would rip into ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop

... forehead and running down into his eyes, or streaking his cheeks, while the deputy was gaily entertaining the widow, who was about equally divided in her attentions. As they proceeded Simon would say, "A very deep place here;" "bar here;" "push her off a little from that snag," etc., and the deputy would occasionally supply the widow with persimmons. While in the deepest part of the stream the widow discovered a splendid bunch of persimmons hanging from a bough which reached to the centre of the river. She declared she must have them. Simon rested ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... of the crowd have nicer manners than our dear Eleanor and are better students," Mary Brooks had said to Betty. "Otherwise I'm afraid your ship of state will run into a snag of ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... a person engaged in the fishery; and in the United States the naked trunk of a tree, which, imbedded in a river, becomes one of the very dangerous snag tribe. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... The house-doors being open, Snag the dog came in, and he joined in the search, you may be sure, although I do not know that he exactly understood what they ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... frantically she held on and slid back, and at the end of a long run through comparatively open forest she got a stinging blow in the face from a far-spreading branch of pine. Bo missed, by what seemed only an inch, a solid snag that would have broken her in two. Both Pedro and Dale got out of Helen's sight. Then Helen, as she began to lose Bo, felt that she would rather run greater risks than be left behind to get lost in the forest, and she urged her horse. Dale's yell pealed back. Then it seemed ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... stop that soon or not," remarked Seaton as he set the levers, "but we may as well have something to shoot at. We'd better take our regular twelve-hour tricks, hadn't we, Mart? It's a wonder we got as far as this without striking another snag. I'll take the first trick at the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... deafening roar of foam and breakers were a novel experience which some of our passengers would apparently have cheerfully dispensed with. There was an awkward moment when the cable got foul of a snag, and the White Horse swerved round and lay broadside to the torrent, which for several minutes heeled her over at a very uncomfortable angle. "Something will happen here some day," coolly remarked the pilot, a long, lanky New Englander, lighting a fresh ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... she looked up at me. She had but one tooth in the front of her head. I had become so nervous and easily affected in the last few days that the woman's face made a loathsome impression upon me. The long yellow snag looked like a little finger pointing out of her gum, and her gaze was still full of sausage as she turned it upon me. I immediately lost all appetite, and a feeling of nausea came over me. When I reached the market-place I went to the fountain and drank a little. I looked up; ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun

... upon it taking a good hour in the darkness, what with the care they would have to exercise to avoid half-dried pools, scattered fragments of coral rock, and the many heaps of snag-like trees half buried in sand and mud, but when as near as they could guess an hour had passed they were still some distance from the brig and suffering from a feeling of weariness which made them all trudge along slowly and ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... whereabouts of a steamer can be distinguished as it steals upon us, from the superior whiteness of its column of "exhaust," penetrating the bank of dark gray fog; and occasionally the echoes are awakened by the burly roar of its whistle, which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. But the snag is an insidious enemy, not revealing itself until we are within a rod or two, and then there is a quick cry of warning from the stern sheets—"Hard a-port!" or "Starboard, quick!" and only a strong side-pull, aided by W——'s paddle, sends us free from the jagged, branching ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... turned several different shades of red and realized that he had struck the biggest snag he'd ever struck in any courting career, past or present. He laughed violently for a second or two, tried to hang his hat on both knees at the same time, and finally sank his ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... moment might save them from this mischance. And there was the further, and not altogether unreal, ground of confidence, that the examiner himself might be uneasily conscious of the ever-present possibility that some hidden Hebrew snag might rudely jag a hole in his own vessel while sailing the mare ignotum of oriental literature. Of course, the examination would also include other departments of sacred learning, for it was the province and duty of Presbytery to satisfy itself as to the soundness in the faith ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... fog as this, and there had been no fog-horn on Mount Ararat, and he had passed by with his excursion and not made a landing, and had floated around on the freshet until all the animals starved, and the ark had struck a snag and burst a hole in their bottom. I tell you, we can all congratulate ourselves that Noah happened to blunder on that high ground. If that ark had been lost, either by being foundered, or being blowed up by Fenians ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck

... suttenly fixing to make a monstrous big mistake. I've give a heap of study in my time to this question of licker drams. I have observed that when you combine in a gen'elman them two features jest mentioned—a Adamses' apple that's always running up and down like a cat squirrel on a snag, and eyes away 'round yonder so's he can see both ways at once without moving his head—you've got a gen'elman that's specially ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... darkness, and so he endeavoured to put a stop to our progress. If so, he was mistaken, for we managed to keep down the centre of the stream, paddling with might and main. We incurred the danger, we knew, of running against a floating log or a snag, or sticking fast on a shallow; but it was better to run these risks than be shot by Indians, for although we had only seen one there might be dozens of them. It became more and more evident that the red men had revolted against the whites. Perhaps the man ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... Inventing and whittling faster than ever, I made another hickory clock, shaped like a scythe to symbolize the scythe of Father Time. The pendulum is a bunch of arrows symbolizing the flight of time. It hangs on a leafless mossy oak snag showing the effect of time, and on the snath is written, "All flesh is grass." This, especially the inscription, rather pleased father, and, of course, mother and all my sisters and brothers admired it. Like the first it indicates the days of the week ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... a snag somewhere," said Bob. "After we get everything assembled, we've still got to run our leading-in wire down to my bedroom. But I don't think that will take us ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman

... the tangling cumber And pack of mountain lumber That spring floods downward force, Over sunken snag, and bar Where the grating shallows are, The good boat held ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... circumlocution for the purpose of "padding," that is, filling space, or when they strike a snag in writing upon subjects of which they know little or nothing. The young writer should steer clear of it and learn to express his thoughts and ideas as briefly as possible ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... years before I see my mother. The old snag I was riding give out and they was leading so they changed me. I cried two or three days. They didn't pay my crying no 'tention. They had a string of nigger men and boys, no women, far as from me 'cross to that bank. I judge it is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... intermittent labor, he employed his intervals of leisure in coarse and brutal recreation. Their roistering exploits, indeed, have made these rivermen almost better known at play than at work. One of them, the notorious Mike Fink, known as "the Snag" on the Mississippi and as the "Snapping Turtle" on the Ohio, has left the record, not that he could load a keel boat in a certain length of time, or lift a barrel of whiskey with one arm, or that no tumultuous current had ever compelled him to back water, but that he could "out-run, ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... suggest another, I suppose," she broke in scornfully. "Well, I may as well inform you that you are about to strike a snag," she went on, a trifle inelegantly in her desire to be emphatic. "We intend to see to it that the mother of that baby gives it a name of her ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... and stretched completely across the creek to hold in check the thousands of saw-logs that filled the stream farther than the eye could see, had parted near the opposite bank. The end thus loosened had swung down-stream a little way, and there caught on a snag formed of a huge, half-submerged root. It might hold on there indefinitely, or it might get loose at any moment, swing wide open, and set free the imprisoned wealth of logs behind it. As it was, they ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... destruction of the ship and great loss of life. We ran against one of these trees, somewhat sideways luckily for us, but it stood up on end, and amid a frightful noise, and a little momentary consternation, carried away one paddle box and wheel. A snag is only one of the numerous sources of accident in American river navigation. But one soon gets accustomed to the carelessness of danger which characterises the Americans, and on the whole travelling on their river steamers is very pleasant. The ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... the boats grated against a snag, which reminded them of the danger which they would have to encounter when returning. The rocks and snags could not, as they were then steering, do them much injury, but it would be a very different matter when ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... They show every change in costume that every one of the ensemble makes during the performance. The same thing with the principals. Always figure the time you have allowed each person to change costume, otherwise you will strike a snag which ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... himself was making for a grounded log, one of the first of the drive. It had caught upon some snag, and was swinging broadside out, into the stream. Let two or three more timbers catch with it and there would be the nucleus of a jam that might result ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... neighbour and shoving him off the pavement, and always with an eye wide open for any adventure. As to the kind of adventure, they are not particular so long as it promises excitement. Sometimes they go through their whole school career without accident. More often they run up against a snag in the shape of some serious-minded and muscular person who objects to having his toes trodden on and being shoved off the pavement, and then they usually sober down, to the mutual advantage of themselves and the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse



Words linked to "Snag" :   rent, obstruction, bump, protrusion, obstacle, protuberance, opening, gibbousness, extrusion, bulge, gibbosity, rub, hew, obtain, hitch, hump, jut, swelling, prominence, gap, excrescence, tree, catch



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