snail king
snail king noun: a snail possessing a sinistral shell, from a species in which dextral shells are the norm.
Noun
snail king (plural snail kings)
- A snail possessing a sinistral shell, from a species in which dextral shells are the norm.
- In German-speaking countries, there is a legend that a left-handed snail specimen is a “snail king” — Schneckenkönig.2016, Øyvind Hammer, The Perfect Shape: Spiral Stories, page 30
- Virtually, almost all snail shells wind in the clockwise direction (mathematically negative) when viewed from above. This is not the case with the "snail king".2017, Georg Glaeser, Math Tools: 500+ Applications in Science and Arts, page 330
Forms of snail king
| plural | snail kings |
|---|
Origin of snail king
Calque of German Schneckenkönig (“snail king”)
Questions about snail king
- What does snail king mean?
- Snail king means a snail possessing a sinistral shell, from a species in which dextral shells are the norm.
- What part of speech is snail king?
- Snail king is a noun.
- What is the plural of snail king?
- The plural of snail king is snail kings.
Words near snail king in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: snail king (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: “snail king.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/snail_king. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.