puff adder

Noun

puff adder (plural puff adders)

1. Any viper or adder in genus Bitis,
   1. especially, a common puffadder (Bitis arietans), found in Southern Africa.
      • In the pools, too, was a species of small alligator or enormous iguana, I do not know which, that fed, Billali told me, upon the waterfowl, also large quantities of a hideous black water-snake, of which the bite is very dangerous, though not, I gathered, so deadly as a cobra's or a puff adder's.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC