Word.ws English Dictionary

snorkel

snorkel noun: a hollow tube, held in the mouth, or mounted on and opening into a diving mask, used by swimmers for breathing underwater.

snorkel: a hollow tube, held in the mouth, or mounted on and opening into a diving mask, used by swimmers...
Image: Alex, eigenes Foto, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

snorkel (plural snorkels)

  1. A hollow tube, held in the mouth, or mounted on and opening into a diving mask, used by swimmers for breathing underwater.
    • They wore snorkels while exploring the coral reef.
    • She used a snorkel to breathe while swimming underwater.
  2. A retractable tube fitted in diesel-engine submarines to allow sufficient ventilation that the engines may be used at periscope depth.
    Synonyms:
    snort
  3. A snorkel parka.

Verb

snorkel (third-person singular simple present snorkels, present participle (US) snorkeling or (UK) snorkelling, simple past and past participle (US) snorkeled or (UK) snorkelled)

  1. To use a snorkel.
    • We spent the afternoon snorkeling in the clear blue waters.

snorkel meaning in Kannada and Indonesian

snorkel in Kannada

ಉಸಿರುಕೊಳವೆ, ಗಾಳಿಕೊಳವೆ

snorkel in Indonesian

hollow tube used for breathing underwater
snorkel

Examples of snorkel in a sentence

  • Younger Scals wore snorkel parkas, Clark’s Nature Trekkers, Lee cords, Slazenger jumpers, Fred Perry t-shirts, Samba or Mamba training shoes.
  • Visitors can access snorkel and dive platforms, high-speed dive boats, a glass-bottomed boat and the luxury catamaran Reef Empress.
  • The snorkels have automatic closing devices that usually work by gravity — which means little when a diver is upside down.

All 11 example sentences with snorkel

Synonyms of snorkel

Forms of snorkel

Noun
pluralsnorkels
Verb
third-person singular presentsnorkels
present participle USsnorkeling
present participle UKsnorkelling
past participle USsnorkeled
past USsnorkeled
past participle UKsnorkelled
past UKsnorkelled

Plural of snorkel: snorkels

Origin of snorkel

Borrowed from German Schnorchel (“(submarine) snorkel”), related to schnarchen (“to snore”). Thus named because of the submarine snorkel's functional similarity to a nose and because of its noise when in use. The anglicized spelling was first recorded in 1945. See, for example, Mark S. Watson, "New Epoch in Sea War", The Baltimore Sun, December 31, 1945, p. 8: "The Germans' earlier quest of the last important objective, it will be remembered, had produced the Snorkel, a long exhaust tube whose vent reached above water and permitted a submerged vessel to discharge its Diesel fumes in open air."

Words formed from snorkel

Phrases with snorkel

Words that rhyme with snorkel

Questions about snorkel

What does snorkel mean?
Snorkel means a hollow tube, held in the mouth, or mounted on and opening into a diving mask, used by swimmers for breathing underwater.
What is snorkel in Kannada?
Snorkel in Kannada is ಉಸಿರುಕೊಳವೆ, ಗಾಳಿಕೊಳವೆ. See Snorkel meaning in Kannada.
What part of speech is snorkel?
Snorkel can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of snorkel?
The plural of snorkel is snorkels.

Words near snorkel in the dictionary

  1. snorings
  2. snork
  3. snork down
  4. snorked
  5. snorked down
  6. snorkel
  7. snorkel parka
  8. snorkel parkas
  9. snorkeled
  10. snorkeler
  11. snorkelers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snorkel (page history and authors); snorkel (Kannada Wiktionary) (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-snorkel.ogg.

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