Word.ws English Dictionary

snipe hunt

UK/ˈsnaɪpˌhʌnt/

snipe hunt noun: a prank in which a gullible victim is sent off on a fruitless search for a nonexistent item.

Noun

snipe hunt (plural snipe hunts)

  1. (idiomatic) A prank in which a gullible victim is sent off on a fruitless search for a nonexistent item.
    • And you asked Charles Briggs for the name of the man who bought the secret, and he gives you a legend. A man who might not even exist. You know what, this is a snipe hunt.2012 December 13, “The Leviathan”, in Elementary, season 1, episode 10, spoken by Watson (Lucy Liu)

Verb

snipe hunt (third-person singular simple present snipe hunts, present participle snipe hunting, simple past and past participle snipe hunted)

  1. (intransitive) To participate, as the gullible victim, in a snipe hunt.

Synonyms of snipe hunt

Forms of snipe hunt

Noun
pluralsnipe hunts
Verb
third-person singular presentsnipe hunts
present participlesnipe hunting
past participlesnipe hunted
pastsnipe hunted

Origin of snipe hunt

* snipe + hunt * Although snipe are an actual family of birds, a snipe hunt was originally a quest for an imaginary creature whose description varies.

Questions about snipe hunt

What does snipe hunt mean?
Snipe hunt means a prank in which a gullible victim is sent off on a fruitless search for a nonexistent item.
What part of speech is snipe hunt?
Snipe hunt can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce snipe hunt?
Snipe hunt is pronounced /ˈsnaɪpˌhʌnt/ (UK).
What is the plural of snipe hunt?
The plural of snipe hunt is snipe hunts.

Words near snipe hunt in the dictionary

  1. snipe
  2. snipe eel
  3. snipe eels
  4. snipe flies
  5. snipe fly
  6. snipe hunt
  7. snipe hunted
  8. snipe hunting
  9. snipe hunts
  10. snipebill
  11. snipebills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snipe hunt (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-snipe hunt.ogg, en-au-snipe hunt.ogg.

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