Word.ws English Dictionary

viperling

viperling is the diminutive of viper.

Meaning of viper

Noun

viper (plural vipers)

  1. A venomous snake in the family Viperidae.
    Synonyms:
    adder
  2. (informal) Any venomous snake.
  3. (figuratively) A dangerous, treacherous, or malignant person.
    • And aggravate my folly who committed / To ſuch a viper his moſt ſacred truſt / Of ſecreſie, my ſafety, and my life.1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 62
  4. (slang) A person who smokes marijuana.
    • Dreamed about a reefer five feet long / Mighty Mezz, but not too strong / You'll be high but not for long / If you're a vipera. 1936, Stuff Smith, “If You're a Viper”

Forms of viperling

pluralviperlings

Origin of viperling

From viper + -ling.

Questions about viperling

What is viperling the diminutive of?
Viperling is the diminutive of viper.

Words near viperling in the dictionary

  1. viperins
  2. viperish
  3. viperishly
  4. viperishness
  5. viperlike
  6. viperling
  7. viperlings
  8. viperoid
  9. viperous
  10. viperously
  11. viperousness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: viperling (page history and authors); viper (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.

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