Word.ws English Dictionary

snarge

/snɑː(ɹ)dʒ/

snarge noun: the remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (in a bird strike), especially a turbine engine.

snarge: the remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (in a bird strike), especially a...
Image: Sebastian Terfloth Sese_Ingolstadt, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

snarge (uncountable)

  1. (slang) The remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (in a bird strike), especially a turbine engine.
    • Arriving mostly in sealed plastic bags, these included birds’ feet, whole feathers or tiny bits of down, and pulverized bird guts, known as snarge.2009 January 25, Matthew L. Wald, “Identifying the Bird After a Strike, When Not Much Bird Is Left”, in New York Times
    • Snarge can be a wad of a Canada goose lodged inside an airplane engine. Or it can be a broken and burned gull feather littered along the runway. Snarge can even be as small as a rusty-red smear on the nose of an airliner. But no matter what form it takes, every bit of snarge is different — and all...2022 April 14, Jason Bittel, “‘Snarge’ Happens, and Studying It Makes Your Flight Safer”, in New York Times, archived from the original on 14 Apr 2022

Origin of snarge

Blend of snot + garbage.

Questions about snarge

What does snarge mean?
Snarge means the remains of a bird after it has collided with an airplane (in a bird strike), especially a turbine engine.
What part of speech is snarge?
Snarge is a noun.
How do you pronounce snarge?
Snarge is pronounced /snɑː(ɹ)dʒ/.

Words near snarge in the dictionary

  1. snarfled
  2. snarfles
  3. snarfling
  4. snarfs
  5. SNARG
  6. snarge
  7. SNARGs
  8. snaring
  9. snarings
  10. snark
  11. snark hunt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snarge (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-us-snarge.oga.

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