Word.ws English Dictionary

serpents

serpents is the plural of serpent.

serpents is the third-person singular simple present indicative of serpent.

Meaning of serpent

Noun

serpent (plural serpents)

  1. (archaic, literary) A snake.
    • He falls into it, who has digg'd a Pit.
      Who breaks a Hedge is with a Serpent bit.1712, A. Hill, chapter 9, in The Book of Ecclesiastes Paraphrased. A Divine Poem., Newcastle upon Tyne: J. White, page 38
  2. A snake-like creature, such as a sea serpent.
    • Then Beowulf too rallied. With his whetted dagger he slit a gash in the serpent's middle.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 46
  3. (figuratively) A person who is subtle, malicious, treacherous, or deceiving.
    • He is a very serpent in my way.c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  4. An obsolete wind instrument in the brass family, whose shape is suggestive of a snake (Wikipedia article).
  5. A kind of firework with a serpentine motion.

See all 9 meanings of serpent

Forms of serpents

alternative form (archaic)serpentes

Phrases with serpents

Questions about serpents

What is serpents the plural of?
Serpents is the plural of serpent.

Words near serpents in the dictionary

  1. serpentkind
  2. serpentlike
  3. serpently
  4. serpentries
  5. serpentry
  6. serpents
  7. serpentwood
  8. Serpes
  9. serpesh
  10. serpeshes
  11. serpette

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: serpents (page history and authors); serpent (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “serpents.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/serpents. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.