Word.ws English Dictionary

sny

/snaɪ/

sny verb: to move, proceed.

Verb (1)

sny (third-person singular simple present snies, present participle snying, simple past and past participle snied)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete, rare) To move, proceed.

Verb (2)

sny (third-person singular simple present snies, present participle snying, simple past and past participle snied)

  1. (dialectal, intransitive) Abound, swarm, teem, be infested, with something
    • “And did you kill it?”
      “I did, for they’re a nuisance. The place is fair snied wi’ ‛em.”1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 4”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC

Noun (1)

sny (plural snies)

  1. An upward curve at the edge of a plank.
  2. An upward curve in the lines of a wooden watercraft from amidships toward its bow and its stern.

Noun (2)

sny (plural snies)

  1. (archaic) A small channel of water.
    • “Well, Mars Tom, my idea is like dis. It ain’t no use, we can’t kill dem po’ strangers dat ain’t doin’ us no harm, till we’ve had practice — I knows it perfectly well, Mars Tom — ‛deed I knows it perfectly well. But ef we takes a’ ax or two, jist you en me en Huck, en slips acrost de river to-night...1893, Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer, Detective and Other Stories (1896), page unknown
    • The word snye, sny or snie has been used for many years to describe a channel behind an island, with slack current or partly dried, or some such similar feature.1948, Lawrence Johnstone Burpee, editor, Canadian Geographical Journal, volume 36, Royal Canadian Geographical Society, page 151

Noun (3) capitalized: SNY

SNY (plural SNYs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of sensitive needs yard (“part of a prison for prisoners who cannot safely be housed with the general population”).
    Synonyms:
    SNU

Synonyms of sny

Forms of sny

Verb
third-person singular presentsnies
present participlesnying
past participlesnied
pastsnied
alternative formsnithe
alternative formsnive
alternative formsnie
alternative formsnye
alternative formsnee
Noun
pluralsnies
pluralSNYs

Origin of sny

Of obscure origin. Likely from late Middle English sniȝen, snyȝen (“to creep”), from Old Danish *snigæ (whence modern Danish snige), from Old Norse sníkja (“to crawl, creep”). If so, doublet of sneak.

First attested in 1674; its etymology is unknown.

First attested in 1711; its etymology is unknown; perhaps from Proto-Germanic *snōwaną, from Proto-Indo-European *sneh₁- (“to wind; twist; braid; plait”). Compare snying and the Danish sno (“to twine”, “to twist”).

Words that rhyme with sny

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sny

What does sny mean?
Sny means to move, proceed.
What part of speech is sny?
Sny can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce sny?
Sny is pronounced /snaɪ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of sny?
The past tense of sny is snied.

Words near sny in the dictionary

  1. snuzzles
  2. snuzzling
  3. SNV
  4. SNVs
  5. SNWDP
  6. sny
  7. Snyder
  8. Snyder County
  9. Snyderbro
  10. Snyderbros
  11. Snyders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sny (page history and authors); SNY (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-sny.wav.

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