Word.ws English Dictionary

sniggle

/ˈsnɪ.ɡəl/

sniggle verb: to chortle or chuckle; snicker.

sniggle: to chortle or chuckle; snicker
Image: Salter, T. F, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb (1)

sniggle (third-person singular simple present sniggles, present participle sniggling, simple past and past participle sniggled)

  1. (intransitive) To chortle or chuckle; snicker.
    • Ay! you see you'll laugh at the bare thought on it — and I'll be bound th' minister, though he's not a laughing man, would ha' sniggled at th' notion of falling in love wi' the child.1864, Elizabeth Gaskell, Cousin Phillis

Verb (2)

sniggle (third-person singular simple present sniggles, present participle sniggling, simple past and past participle sniggled)

  1. (intransitive) To fish for eels by thrusting a baited needle or hook into their dens.
    • But rampant poaching (the correct term for catching a grown-up eel with bait is to “sniggle”, though elvers are caught with something more like a giant sieve) is now prompting authorities to crack down well in advance of next year’s season.[2012 December 1, “Transparent gold”, in The Economist, →ISSN
  2. (transitive) To catch by this means.
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To ensnare.

Verb (3)

sniggle (third-person singular simple present sniggles, present participle sniggling, simple past and past participle sniggled)

  1. (obsolete) To steal something of little value.

Synonyms of sniggle

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of sniggle

Forms of sniggle

third-person singular presentsniggles
present participlesniggling
past participlesniggled
pastsniggled

Origin of sniggle

From an alteration (perhaps due to giggle) of snigger, itself a variant of snicker.

See snig (“a kind of eel”) + -le (frequentative verbal suffix).

From snig or an alteration of snag + -le.

Words formed from sniggle

Questions about sniggle

What does sniggle mean?
Sniggle means to chortle or chuckle; snicker.
What part of speech is sniggle?
Sniggle is a verb.
How do you pronounce sniggle?
Sniggle is pronounced /ˈsnɪ.ɡəl/.
What is the past tense of sniggle?
The past tense of sniggle is sniggled.

Words near sniggle in the dictionary

  1. sniggerings
  2. sniggers
  3. sniggersome
  4. sniggery
  5. snigging
  6. sniggle
  7. sniggled
  8. sniggler
  9. snigglers
  10. sniggles
  11. sniggling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sniggle (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sniggle.wav.

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