Word.ws English Dictionary

snakehead

snakehead noun: a family of perciform fish native to Africa and Asia, Channidae. Also the alternative form of snake's head.

Noun

snakehead (plural snakeheads)

  1. A family of perciform fish native to Africa and Asia, Channidae.
    • Through this plantation ran a creek full of snakeheads and eels, its overflow swelling the swamp around it.2015, Eka Kurniawan, translated by Labodalih Sembiring, Man Tiger, Verso, page 1
  2. (slang) A Chinese smuggler, especially one who smuggles people.
    • Why would they want to run? -- To get away from the snakeheads. -- What's that? -- The snakeheads pay to get them here and then they gotta work off what they owe.2008, Frozen River, 00:33:10
    • […] but snakeheads involved in air smuggling may venture into sea smuggling. A thirty-two-year-old housewife from Fuzhou who left China by boat alleged that her snakehead was involved in both.2011, David Kyle, Rey Koslowski, Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives, page 190
  3. (US, derogatory, ethnic, slang, slur) A black person.
  4. A showy perennial plant, Chelone glabra, found in North American marshlands; the turtlehead
  5. (US) A loose, bent-up end of one of the strap rails, or flat rails, formerly used on American railroads.

Also used as

snakehead is also the alternative form of snake's head.

snakehead meaning in Assamese, Tagalog, Malay and Indonesian

snakehead in Assamese

fish
শ’ল xöl, গৰৈ goroi

snakehead in Tagalog

fish
dalag

snakehead in Malay

fish
haruan

snakehead in Indonesian

fish
gabus
More languagesFewer languages
snakehead in Thai
ปลาช่อน
snakehead in Vietnamese
cá chuối, cá đô, cá lóc, cá sộp
snakehead in Myanmar
ငါးရံ့ nga:ram.

Forms of snakehead

pluralsnakeheads

Origin of snakehead

From snake + head.

Words formed from snakehead

Questions about snakehead

What does snakehead mean?
Snakehead means a family of perciform fish native to Africa and Asia, Channidae.
What is snakehead in Assamese?
Snakehead in Assamese is শ’ল (xöl), গৰৈ (goroi). See Snakehead meaning in Assamese.
What part of speech is snakehead?
Snakehead is a noun.
What is the plural of snakehead?
The plural of snakehead is snakeheads.

Words near snakehead in the dictionary

  1. snakefish
  2. snakefishes
  3. snakeflesh
  4. snakeflies
  5. snakefly
  6. snakehead
  7. snakeheads
  8. snakehood
  9. snakeish
  10. snakekind
  11. snakeless

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snakehead (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-snakehead.ogg.

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