snarks

Noun (1)

snark (uncountable)

1. an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.
   • Brit-wit, in fact, could be seen as the precursor to the communicative style valorized on these beratement panels and on fan/rating communities, namely snark or snarkasm. Snark, a hybrid of “snide” and “remark," is a biting, casual verbal attack. Its subtle insult comprises a tone that acts as a...2010 October 19, Michael Kackman, Marnie Binfield, Matthew Thomas Payne, Allison Perlman, Bryan Sebok, Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence, Routledge, →ISBN, page 65

   Synonyms:

   sarcasm, snideness

Noun (2)

snark (plural snarks)

1. (literary) The fictional creature of Lewis Carroll's poem, used allusively to refer to fruitless quest or search.
   • When the auctioneer had exhausted his vocabulary in describing the merits of an animal, his winding-up formula was "One times! two times! three times!" Then the hammer gave a tap, and he and our party would devote our energies to discovering the last bidder - a research which generally was as...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 345
2. A graph in which every node has three branches, and the edges cannot be coloured in fewer than four colours without two edges of the same colour meeting at a point.
3. (particle) A fluke or unrepeatable result or detection in an experiment.
   • Cabrera's Valentine's Day monopole detection or some extremely energetic cosmic rays could be examples of snarks.

See all 8 meanings of snark