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Snicker   Listen
noun
Snicker  n.  (Written also snigger)  A half suppressed, broken laugh.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Snicker" Quotes from Famous Books



... into church with it and right to the top of the aisle to Grandfather King's pew. Grandfather King used to say he would never forget it to his dying day. The minister was preaching and everything was quiet and solemn when he heard a snicker behind him. Grandfather King turned around with a terrible frown—for you know in those days it was thought a dreadful thing to laugh in church—to rebuke the offender; and what did he see but that great, hulking ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... along the floor, or the brief cough of perturbation. One or two very daring young men leaned over and made some remark in privacy, behind the back of the hand, this followed by a nudge and a knowing look, perhaps even by a snicker, the latter quickly suppressed. Little by little these bursts of courage had their effect. Whispers became spasmodic, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... faint snicker arose from two or three of the other girls. "You seem to have recovered your wits again, Nat," she said with elaborate carelessness. "We are quits, I guess, ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... which had been their objective-point they could hear and see the cattle moving in the brush below; then a horse on picket snorted, and as they slid quietly down the bank they heard a sound which made Babe snicker. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... And the same applies to the human family. You take one of these long-necked cowmen and what does he know outside of cattle. Nine times out of ten, I can tell a sensible girl by merely looking at her neck. Now snicker, you dratted young fools, just as if I wasn't talking horse sense to you. Some of you boys haven't got much more sabe ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... 'leven—thutty-six poun's behin'!" said Mr. Buck, smacking his lips as over some good thing. Now he should have vent for his spite against the girl. "Thutty-six lashes on yer bar' back by yer sweet'art." Mr. Buck said this with a dreadful snicker in Little Lizay's face. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... pole; (Jedge, you jest warm the tar;) You'll think you'd better ha' gut among a tribe o' Mongrel Tartars, 'Fore we've done showin' how we raise our Southun prize tar-martyrs; A moultin' fallen cherubim, ef he should see ye, 'd snicker, Thinkin' he hedn't nary chance. Come, genlemun, le' 's liquor; An', Gin'ral, when you 've mixed the drinks an' chalked 'em up, tote roun' An' see ef ther' 's a feather-bed (thet's borryable) in town. We'll try ye fair, Ole Grafted-Leg, an' ef the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... broadening zone of blue sky and a heavenful of brilliant cloud-creatures, we were sailing over Lake Mollychunkamug. Fair Mollychunkamug had not smiled for us until now;—now a sunny grin spread over her smooth cheeks. She was all smiling, and presently, as the breeze dimpled her, all a "snicker" up into the roots of her hair, up among her forest-tresses. Mollychunkamug! Who could be aught but gay, gay even to the farcical, when on such a name? Is it Indian? Bewildered Indian we deem it,—transmogrified ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... earth when the canneries open. They hint around that something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I think it's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack at Crow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money to carry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirm and squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on the market ten cents a pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in the fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they are chiefly ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... make me old friend laff. So I starts in to guy him, an' he begins to snicker, an' that makes the bear mad, an' he begins to roll the Injun. Then, you bet, I couldn't make him laff no more; for, what with shammin' dead, an' bein' frightened to death into the bargain, I don't think there was much ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... by one, Sir, but by a great many; this was a Cheesemonger —they fell out over a Bottle of Brandy, went to Snicker Snee; Mr. Bellmour cut his Throat, and was hang'd for't, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... that when he is expected to," answered Sydney, gloomily. "I am always saddest at dinner, for I know that I have been asked because there is a tradition in society that I am a wit. If I speak of the gloomiest subjects people snicker; if I am eloquent or pathetic, they roar. I am by nature rather a lyric poet than a wit—ah, you are laughing, Mrs. Carey, you are laughing. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... hand-raising was now repeated with more hubbub and excitement than at first. Those who before had not moved a finger were now waving their hands above their heads. "Red Head" felt that he was lost. He looked very big and foolish, and some of the scholars began to snicker. His helpless condition went straight to my heart, and gripped my sympathies. I felt that if he failed, it would in some way be my failure. I raised my hand, and, under cover of the excitement and the teacher's attempts to regain ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson

... professes to follow in the expectation of being rewarded for so doing, but her head is held high when she doesn't care to see the lowly ones He came to give light and life to. I don't mean she doesn't give old clothes and food and sometimes a little wood to old Mrs. Snicker, who can't move, from rheumatism, but she would no more speak other than stiffly to some of the people I know here than she would go in for suffrage. She doesn't realize she is a living woman. She thinks she is an Ancestor. For years she has forbidden Taylor French to come to her ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... this grave-yard ditty chimed not in with the joyous temper of the company. There was sly nudging and smiling, a snicker from an ill-mannered page, and the only sighs were those ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... room. The elders moved their chairs with a swishing sound, cleared their throats hastily, and put sudden hands up to hide furtive smiles. Elder Duncannon grinned broadly, there was a twinkle in even the minister's eyes, and outside the door Billy manfully stifled a snicker. Elder Harricutt shot his angry little eyes around in the mirthful atmosphere, starting at Mark's quizzical smile, and going around the uneasy group of men, back to Mark again. But the smile was gone! ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... seen the squirrel; but that did not matter; he can locate a victim better with his nose or ears than he can with his eyes. The moment he was sure of the place, he rushed forward without caution. Meeko was in the midst of a prolonged snicker at the scolding jays, when he heard a scratch on the bark below, turned, looked down, and fled with a cry of terror. Kagax was already halfway up the tree, the red fire blazing ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness^; heyday; laughter &c 838; jocosity, jocoseness^; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit &c 842; quip, quirk. [verbal expressions of amusement: list] giggle, titter, snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... you hang up your stocking last night?" asked Whopper, jokingly, and this brought forth a general snicker, and then all the lads ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... and through and through The dixmude blade went snicker-snack; He left it dead, and with its head ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... do this as you do to eat. A noted humorist says that "every time a man laughs he takes a kink out of the chain of life, and thus lengthens it." That is true philosophy, and it is little understood by our nervous, rushing people. We grin and snicker enough, at ourselves and others, but downright hearty laughter is a stranger to the most of us. It should be cultivated till, in an honest way, it supplants, at least, the universal snicker. There is both comfort and health in ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... laugh, cachinnation, giggle, snicker, roar, cackle, grin, chortle, chuckle, guffaw, titter. Associated Words: risible, risibles, risibility, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... turning for relief from this somewhat unpleasant display of Gallic closet skeletons to the discreet exhibition of a few carefully chosen bones in the plays of Bernstein and Bataille, direct descendants of Scribe, Sardou, et Cie, but I may be permitted to indulge in a slight snicker of polite amazement when I discover these gentlemen applying their fingers to their noses in no very pretty-meaning gesture, directed at a grandson of Moliere. For such is Georges Feydeau. His method ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... him, and I would make a —— sight better blower for a side-show than traveling agent for a celebrated physician; and that if I had the pluck of a sick kitten, I would have thrown that old Irish woman out, rather than sit there and snicker at her ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... getting comfortably settled down to rolling the little knob of opium on the needle and has puckered his lips for a good pull, a decayed turnip comes sailing through the open panel and hits him on the back. The people looking in add insult to injury by indulging in an audible snicker, as Ching-We springs up and glares savagely into their faces. This indiscreet expression of their levity at once seals their doom, for Ching-We grabs a pole and hits the boards such a resounding whack, and advances upon them so savagely, that only a few ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... Turning to him, I said, "Let us lose no time. Take off your hat and sandals while I measure you." In an instant the thing was done. The operation was carried through. Before I had finished with the second case, the others began to smile and snicker, and when I was ready for my third subject I simply asked, "Who next?" and they came one after another without complaint. Having measured all the members of the committee, I soberly addressed them. "Now, if there is any harm ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... walk, and he's quite self-important and touchy. The one with the very long bill, and the stiff, stumpy tail that he uses for a cane, is the Redpecker. The one in the checked suit, with the black necktie, yellow satin sleeve-linings, and white patch on his coat-tail, is the Snicker. He's full of fun and a good fellow, but rather crude—for he'll sometimes talk to you a little if he's sure the others aren't looking. Ants are his favorite food, but Avrillia didn't put up any this summer, so I had to send Yassuh down to the colony to get one of my uncles for him. Poor Uncle," ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... shore, showed that like Deerfoot the Shawanoe, they possessed a certain vein of waggery, for at the moment Jack was over the middle of the stream, one of them stooped, and, grasping the head of the trunk, moved it quickly fully a couple of feet to the right, all three bursting into an audible snicker at the same moment. The lad was looking downward, meanwhile stepping carefully, when he glanced across to learn the meaning of the action, the stooping Indian being in his ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... thing; we never paid a cent, and I sithed deep and frequent on the way up from the wharf, for weariness lay holt of me and also little Delight. She preferred hangin' onto me ruther than her parents. And I'd hearn that you'd be fined for laughin', and for a snicker or giggle; but I heard several snickers (Whitfield is full of fun, and young folks will be young folks, and talk and laugh) and not one cent did we see asked for 'em. Why, I'd hearn that they wouldn't ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... come into harmony than the bassoon—oh, melancholy perversity of that instrument—would strike off into another key with a ribald snicker or coarse guffaw, causing more turbulence and another stampede. And this preposterous condition of affairs was kept up the whole evening, the bassoon seeming to take a fiendish delight ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... Old Heck while it called out a suppressed snicker from the cowboys who were with Dorsey and the loafers in the pool-room. The bull-like guffaw of Mike Sabota, the gorilla-built, half-Greek proprietor of the Amusement Parlor roared out above the ripple of laughter from the others. The racing feud between the Y-Bar and the Quarter Circle KT ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman

... then can be transformed back into sound again. I know," he said, with a smile, "that that sounds very much like saying that you can make eggs into an omelet and then get the omelet back into separate eggs again" —here there was an audible snicker from the boys—"but that is very much like what is done by the wireless, although it doesn't ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman

... stubborn little kicker, Kicked until she made me snicker. If she had wings, she couldn't fly, 'Cause she'd be too stubborn ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... down, four on the bed; and Milt's inner ear heard a mute snicker from the Gilsons and Saxton. He tried to talk. He couldn't. Bill looked at him and, perceiving the dumbness, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... colossal nerve though?" the boy ashore shouted. "Why, I know for a dead certainty that the boats were at least three lengths apart at the time. That sure does make me snicker, Brad." ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... those fellows on my sub-committee. Sometimes they are—if anything—too civil. A bit servile, in fact. Then they turn out and look as though they would like to make their teeth meet in my backbone. They sulk, and whisper in groups, and snicker. I am getting sick of it. I must get rid of them. By Jove! there's David Rennes, the painter. I thought he was at Amesbury—with the Carillons, doing Agnes's portrait. It can't be finished. She said distinctly in her letter this morning—"I ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... most affable—Van Tassel Cuyp with the automatic nervous snicker that deepened the furrows from nostril to mouth, a tall stoop-shouldered man of scant forty with the high colour, long, nervous nose, and dull eye of Dutch descent; and Colonel Augustus Magnelius Pietrus Vetchen, scion of an illustrious line whose ancestors had been colonial governors and judges ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... but eleven of yo' own," observed the butcher, with a snicker; "I reckon you'd better take him along to round ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... snicker from the young lady, a grunt from the young gent; but nothing else happens in the way of a glad response. So I chases ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... he riz wid a snort an' a whicker, An' showed dat he wuz sump'n uv a kicker! An' den an' dar, Brer Rabbit 'gun ter snicker, Wid, "Hol' 'im, Brer Fox! 'twon't do ter flicker! Ef you make 'im stan' still, you kin ride 'im de quicker!" De hoss, he r'ar'd an' raise a mighty dust up, An' fust thing you know, Brer Rabbit hear a bust-up! "I hope, Brer Fox, dat you ain't much hurt— But ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris

... theme was Ranald's rescue of Maimie, and the pauses of the singing he filled in with humorous comments that, outside, would have produced only weariness, but in the church, owing to the strange perversity of human nature, sent a snicker along the seat. Unfortunately for him, Ranald's face was so turned that he could not see it, and so he had no hint of the wrath that was steadily boiling up to ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... snicker at that, for there were probably not half a dozen Bibles, if there were so many, represented in that school; but they took her hint as she wrote, and chanted, "II Timothy ii:15, II Timothy ii:15," and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... But his snicker was palpably an assumption of unconcern he did not possess. The more I think over it the more I am surprised that such keen men as the gangsters should have been frightened by what had occurred. But frightened they were, the three of them, out of their bunks and out ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... almost under the tree where the Twins were hiding. This seemed to the Twins so funny that they stuffed their mouths full of meat and then clapped their hands over them to keep from laughing aloud. As it was, a little snicker ran out between Firefly's ...
— The Cave Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... So! Now the gentlemen must snicker, must he? Go find fools like yourself to make you laugh And ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... as Betty glanced fearfully at him. "What did you come for? I suppose you think two rows of corn down flat is something to snicker at?" ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... said the man. So the friend rang the bell, and the next instant the door opened, and he got a broom over his head. 'Is she in?' asked the man on the sidewalk. 'Sure she is,' answered his friend. 'Go right in and you'll get a warm welcome!'" And at this story there was a general snicker. ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... mouse, who was sitting in a hole in the wall, having seen all that happened, squeaked with a nervous snicker: ...
— Mouser Cats' Story • Amy Prentice

... ginger, I couldn't stop. I laughed, and laughed, and then some more, and the tears were running down my cheeks all the time, and I was rolling around like I had wheels for feet. So those two ninnies began to look solemn, and the Englishman shook me a bit, but I couldn't stop. Then he began to snicker like a chump, and first thing he knew he was hanging over one of Tommy's bargain bedsteads just laughing, laughing, laughing, though it was more like crying too. The Scotchman started next, and every time he laughed he rolled into something until he fell ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... and all talk French again. And oracle says, 'He takes his own eggs to market, den.' He don't laugh at that, for wits never laugh at their own jokes; but the rest snicker till they actilly scream. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... you seemed to see the Original White Hermit himself, brooding over his tiny principality of barren rock, and performing miracles with the aid of the imported carboy and the indigenous rill. As the evening gloomed, and twilight fell among the crags, a faint snicker spread upon the air, and in the dim light of the rising moon one might fancy a finger laid to the side of the nose of the holy man. From these reveries, a smart blow on the back, neatly executed by the butler, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... with that stealthy gliding motion peculiar to the feline race, the leopard soon came in sight of a fine bushbok, whose sleek sides drew from him an irrepressible snicker of delight. But the bushbok was not within spring-range. He was at the foot of a low precipice. Creeping to the top of this with great caution the leopard looked over with a view to estimate distance. It was yet too far for a spring, ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... all points from Washington. The same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way. The Gaps through the Blue Ridge, I understand to be about the following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestala, five miles; Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight; Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's, fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse



Words linked to "Snicker" :   snigger, express mirth, express joy, laugh, snort



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