Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use snarl in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb, noun

Snarl means to entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots. Example: “The raging hound's flews were twisted upwards in an angry snarl.”

Examples of snarl by meaning

verbTo entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots.

  • to snarl a skein of thread

nounAn intricate complication; a problematic difficulty; a knotty or tangled situation.

  • Bond grinned again as he thought of Damon's exasperation at having to dish out a lot of soft soap to Washington when he probably had plenty of other Anglo-American snarls to disentangle.1954, Ian Fleming, “True or False?”, in Live and Let Die, London: Pan Books, published 1957, page 89

nounA slow-moving traffic jam.

  • The biggest cities feel the most acute impact of the last mile – of the squads of trucks and vans, the parcel hubs and sorting centres, the parking snarls and the discarded boxes.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian

More sentences with snarl

  • The raging hound's flews were twisted upwards in an angry snarl.From the entry flew
  • The snarling dog scared me away without ever opening its mouth.From the entry snarling
  • "Debate me, coward!" snarled the completely normal intellectual.From the entry debate
  • I had been warned of the inadvisability of disturbing sleeping dogs, so it did not surprise me when the wakened dog snarled at me.From the entry inadvisability
  • The word 'lobby' is in effect a snarl word in the MWC.2016, Dawn Archer, What's in a Word-list?: Investigating Word Frequency and Keyword Extraction, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry snarl word
  • From the tangled pile of ugliness snarled on the bed, Sherry gleefully pulled a pair of Mrs.2009, Jennifer Crane, Coopers Crossing, →ISBN, page 256. From the entry houseslipper
  • His collection of songlines and timelines snarled at him like a screwtaped confession.2007, Palace Pier Blues, →ISBN, page 33. From the entry screwtape
  • The snarl opened its jaws and Shelyid popped out, none the worse for wear.2002, Eric Flint, Richard Roach, Forward the Mage. From the entry unbased
  • The rain god appears as a werejaguar, part human, part snarling beast.1971, Horizon, page 73. From the entry werejaguar
  • Next Representative McCarthy promises to footrace a Manhattan bus to prove that transportation is snarled.1970 June 2, “Senators and Circuses”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the…. From the entry footrace
  • If the taste of spinach nauseates you, then the word spinach would be a snarl word.1969, Jay Cline, Voices in literature, language, and composition, page 204. From the entry snarl word
  • Caywood holds the rifle which time after time brought down a raging, snarling prairie gray.1939, Arthur Hawthorne Carhart, quoting Bill Caywood, “World Champion Wolfer”, in Outdoor Life, volume 84, number 3. From the entry gray
  • The big mongrel, in agony, snarled and made a lunge at his irritatingly dancing tormentor.1922, Albert Payson Terhune, Further Adventures of Lad. From the entry grazingly
  • With the low, guttural snarl of the bull ape he sprang for the Frenchman.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 45. From the entry bull
  • And just then he gave a snort and a snarl and rushed at me.1904, Jack London, chapter 30, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC. From the entry panicky
  • The workplace was everything in season one of Industry, a chaotic open office of “Bloomie” (Bloomberg) terminals and territorial snarling.2022 September 26, Craig Mathieson, “Ambition and moral bankruptcy is the currency in which this ferocious show trades”, in The Sydney…. From the entry Bloomie
  • "You have no idea what's going on, Melanie," she snarled.2014, Marni Bates, Awkwardly Ever After, page 77. From the entry riddle me that, Batman
  • So we shoulder our daypacks and trudge warily along the muddy rivercourse towards the tumbling snarl of the Kapichira Falls.2008, Jacques Marais, “Trekking, Hiking and Backpacking: Boot Camp”, in Great African Adventures: A Guide to the Mother Continent’s…. From the entry rivercourse
  • 'Over my dead body,' she snarls at him.1998, Leon Schuster, Leon Schuster's Lekker, Thick South African Joke Book, page 106. From the entry oke
  • One could visualize the bursting of mailbags and the roadfuls of snarled trucks hard by the sagging loading docks.1975, Robert John Myers, The Coming Collapse of the Post Office, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., →ISBN, page 43. From the entry roadful
  • "It's like this, Harry," he said, kind of rutsching around in that lounge chair and snarling with pain.1959, Howard Nemerov, A commodity of dreams & other stories. From the entry rutsch
  • It seems a natural question to ask as we watch international relations reduced to a welter of snarls and countersnarls.1950, United States. Dept. of State, International Information and Cultural Series, volume 11, page 5. From the entry countersnarl
  • The tide was swacking its heart out on the snarls of rocks that intermittently crocheted the coast line.1946, Lucy Rountree Kuykendall, P.S. to Pecos, page 45. From the entry swack
  • Trump’s campaign of retribution began to intensify in mid-July after an adviser stoked his snarling impatience over the slow pace of Justice Department investigations.2025 September 27, “Inside the Trump Administration’s Push to Prosecute James Comey”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York…. From the entry snarling
  • Lovano joined him, blustering without snarl.2009 September 25, Nate Chinen, “It Feels Like Home: The Sounds of Coltrane”, in New York Times. From the entry zipperlike
  • He was quivering in the corner, a nasty, scrawny, Gollumesque type creature, scared, spitting, snarling, panting, knowing I was on the attack, a cornered beast!2009, Ben Gander, OCD & ME, Gander Publications, page 141. From the entry Gollumesque
  • What frazzled pollsters, surly op-ed pages, snarling cable talkfests and issue-starved candidates for office need is a fresh source of hot-eyed national polarization.2004 June 2, William Safire, “Abolish the Penny”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 19 Aug 2020. From the entry polarization
  • Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous.1980, Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers. From the entry knout
  • The waitress is a young slattern who tugs a snarl out of her hair with her fingers as she repeats Guttmann’s order for two cappuccini.1976, Trevanian, Trevanian: The Main, published 1984, →ISBN, page 463. From the entry cappuccini
  • Now go shoot pigeon?' I snarled.1957, Joan Gerstad, The jungle was our home. From the entry bullier
  • Why should ye glower and snarl at each other, like a kennel o' mad puppies, when it's the brave frolic ye may have together?1913, anonymous author, chapter VI, in Live to be Useful or, The Story of Annie Lee and Her Irish Nurse. From the entry arrah
  • He snarled, and the porky looked to be running away but swung his tail and put about twenty-five quills in the side of our dog’s face.2021, Ron Paliskis, “The Beasts at the lake”, in Ron: A Coke Alley Boy, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Dorrance Publishing Co, →ISBN, section…. From the entry porky
  • With their uncorked engine exhaust snarling, the B-25s zoomed over the twin spires of the impressive white cathedral and strafed several supply dumps alongside the waterfront.2013, Bruce Gamble, Target: Rabaul, →ISBN, page 155. From the entry uncorked
  • Case in point: this morning’s traffic report included the usual five or six accidents with injuries and multicar crashes that snarl the Bay Area freeways twice a day.2007 January 15, “Fed Up in San Francisco: Tales From the Parking Wars (3 Letters)”, in New York Times. From the entry multicar
  • He brought the car to a stop before the bridge, downshifted and then put her at the road again in a rising disciplined snarl along the N.6 to Cannes.a. 1962, Ernest Hemingway, chapter 27, in The Garden of Eden, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1986, →ISBN, page 229. From the entry downshift
  • Hella looked about delightedly at all of it, the cafés, the self-contained people, the violent snarl of the traffic, the blue-caped traffic policeman and his white, gleaming club.1956, James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, Penguin, published 2001, Part Two, Chapter 4. From the entry caped
  • The Associated Press reported that the polar bears had murdered their denmate, that the other animals had “snarled and howled, leaping and tearing at the kill.”1932 November 7, Time 1932-11-07: Vol 20 Iss 19. From the entry denmate

Meaning of snarl

  1. verb To entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots.
  2. verb To become entangled.
  3. verb To place in an embarrassing situation; to ensnare; to make overly complicated.

Full definition of snarl

Questions about snarl in a sentence

How do you use snarl in a sentence?
Snarl is used as a verb and noun. For example: “The raging hound's flews were twisted upwards in an angry snarl.”
What is a short sentence with snarl?
“Lovano joined him, blustering without snarl.”
What does snarl mean?
Snarl means to entangle; to complicate; to involve in knots.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snarl (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use snarl in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/snarl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.