different between pinch vs snag

English

Etymology

From Middle English pinchen, from Old French *pinchier, pincer (“to pinch”), from Vulgar Latin *pinci?re (“to puncture, pinch”), from possible merger of *puncti?re (“a puncture, sting”), from Latin puncti? (“a puncture, prick”) and *picc?re (“to strike, sting”), from Frankish *pikk?n, from Proto-Germanic *pikk?n? (“to pick, peck, prick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p?nt?/
• Rhymes: -?nt?

Verb

pinch (third-person singular simple present pinches, present participle pinching, simple past and past participle pinched)

1. To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.

   The children were scolded for pinching each other.

   This shoe pinches my foot.

2. To squeeze between the thumb and forefinger.
3. To squeeze between two objects.
4. (slang, transitive) To steal, usually something inconsequential.

   Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
5. (slang, transitive) To arrest or capture.
6. (horticulture) To cut shoots or buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
7. (nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
8. (hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
9. (obsolete, intransitive) To be stingy or covetous; to live sparingly.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   • 1788, Benjamin Franklin (attributed), Paper

     the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare

10. To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
11. (figuratively) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.

    to be pinched for money

    • c. 1610?, Walter Raleigh, A Discourse of War

      want of room […] which pincheth the whole nation

    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture 2:

      The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no other human records show.

12. To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
13. (obsolete) To complain or find fault.
    • 1809, Alexander Chalmers ed. The Works of the English Poets, from Cahucer to Cowper, Vol. 1, modern rendering of poem imputed to Geoffrey Chaucer, "A Ballad which Chaucer made in Praise or rather Dispraise of Women for their Doubleness":

      Therefore who so them accuse

      Of any double entencion,

      To speake, rowne, other to muse,

      To pinch at their condicion,

      All is but false collusion,

      I dare rightwell the sothe express,

      They have no better protection,

      But shrowd them vnder doubleness.

Derived terms

• pinch off
• pinch out
• pinch a loaf

Translations

Noun

pinch (plural pinches)

1. The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
2. A close compression of anything with the fingers.

   I gave the leather of the sofa a pinch, gauging the texture.

3. A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
4. An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "Die Like a Dog", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, page 171:

     It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch, and it sure was a pinch.

5. A metal bar used as a lever for lifting weights, rolling wheels, etc.
6. An organic herbal smoke additive.
7. (physics) A magnetic compression of an electrically-conducting filament.
8. The narrow part connecting the two bulbs of an hourglass.
   • 2001, Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time:

     It looked like an hourglass, but all those little glittering shapes tumbling through the pinch were seconds.

9. (slang) An arrest.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ??? (pinchi)

Translations

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?snæ?/
• Rhymes: -æ?

Etymology 1

Of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Old Norse snagi (“clothes peg”), perhaps ultimately from a derivative of Proto-Germanic *snakk-, *sn?gg, variations of *snakan? (“to crawl, creep, wind about”).

Compare Norwegian snag, snage (“protrusion; projecting point”), Icelandic snagi (“peg”). Also see Dutch snoek (“pike”).

Noun

snag (plural snags)

1. A stump or base of a branch that has been lopped off; a short branch, or a sharp or rough branch.

   Synonyms: knot, protuberance

   • The coat of arms / Now on a naked snag in triumph borne.

2. A dead tree that remains standing.
3. A tree, or a branch of a tree, fixed in the bottom of a river or other navigable water, and rising nearly or quite to the surface, by which boats are sometimes pierced and sunk.
4. (by extension) Any sharp protuberant part of an object, which may catch, scratch, or tear other objects brought into contact with it.
5. A tooth projecting beyond the others; a broken or decayed tooth.

   • To see our women's teeth look white,
     And ev'ry saucy ill - bred fellow
     Sneers at a mouth profoundly yellow.
     In China none hold women sweet,
     Except their snags are black as jet# (figuratively) A problem or difficulty with something.

   Synonym: hitch
6. A pulled thread or yarn, as in cloth.
7. One of the secondary branches of an antler.

   Synonyms: tine, point

Derived terms

• snaggy
• snaglike

Translations

Verb

snag (third-person singular simple present snags, present participle snagging, simple past and past participle snagged)

1. To catch or tear (e.g. fabric) upon a rough surface or projection.

2. To damage or sink (a vessel) by collision; said of a tree or branch fixed to the bottom of a navigable body of water and partially submerged or rising to just beneath the surface.

3. (fishing) To fish by means of dragging a large hook or hooks on a line, intending to impale the body (rather than the mouth) of the target.

4. (slang, transitive) To obtain or pick up.
   • 2017, Off Track Planet's Travel Guide for the Young, Sexy, and Broke

     Tickets are cheaper the younger you are—snag a youth ticket (if you're twenty-five or under) for a 35 percent discount. If both you and your travel partner are twenty-six or older, the Small Group Saver will knock off 15 percent.

5. (Britain, dialect) To cut the snags or branches from, as the stem of a tree; to hew roughly.
   • 1846, Sir Richard Levinge, "Echoes from the Backwoods", in The New Monthly Volume 76

     When felled and snagged, one end of the tree is placed upon a small sledge, and dragged out of the bush by oxen

Translations

Etymology 2

The Australian National Dictionary Centre suggests that snag as slang for "sausage" most likely derives from the earlier British slang for "light meal", although it makes no comment on how it came to be specifically applied to sausages.Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms The word's use in football slang originates as a shortening of "sausage roll", rhyming slang for "goal", to sausage, and hence, by synonymy, snag.

Noun

snag (plural snags)

1. (Britain, dialect, obsolete) A light meal.
2. (Australia, informal, colloquial) A sausage. [From 1937.]

   Synonyms: (UK) banger, (NZ) snarler

   • 2005, Peter Docker, Someone Else?s Country, 2010, ReadHowYouWant, page 116,

     I fire up the barbie and start cooking snags.

   • 2007, Jim Ford, Don't Worry, Be Happy: Beijing to Bombay with a Backpack, page 196,

     ‘You can get the chooks and snags from the fridge if you want,’ he replied.

     I smiled, remembering my bewilderment upon receiving exactly the same command at my very first barbecue back in Sydney a month after I?d first arrived.

   • 2010, Fiona Wallace, Sense and Celebrity, page 25,

     ‘Hungry? We?ve got plenty of roo,’ one of the men said as she walked up. He pointed with his spatula, ‘and pig snags, cow snags, beef and chicken.’

3. (Australian rules football, slang) A goal.
   • 2003, Greg Baum, "Silver anniversary of a goal achieved", The Age

     "It just kept coming down and I just kept putting them through the middle," he said. "I got an opportunity, and I kicked a few snags."

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Australian rhyming slang
• Appendix:Australian rules football slang

Etymology 3

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

snag (plural snags)

1. A misnaged, an opponent to Chassidic Judaism (more likely modern, for cultural reasons).

References

Anagrams

• AGNs, ANGs, GANs, GNAs, NSAG, gans, nags, sang

Irish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /s?n??a?/

Etymology 1

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

snag m (genitive singular snaga, nominative plural snaganna)

1. a catch (hesitation in voice), gasp, sob
2. a lull (period of rest)

Declension

Derived terms

• snagcheol (“jazz”)

Etymology 2

Probably related to Scottish Gaelic snag (“sharp knock”), also "wood-pecker."

Noun

snag m (genitive singular snaga, nominative plural snaganna)

1. a treecreeper (bird of the family Certhiidae)

   Synonym: beangán

2. goby (fish)

   Synonym: mac siobháin

Declension

Derived terms

Mutation

Further reading

• "snag" in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
• Entries containing “snag” in English-Irish Dictionary, An Gúm, 1959, by Tomás de Bhaldraithe.
• Entries containing “snag” in New English-Irish Dictionary by Foras na Gaeilge.

Scottish Gaelic

Etymology

Related to snaidh (“hew, chip”), from Proto-Celtic *sknad, from Proto-Indo-European *k(?)end- or *k(?)enHd(?)-, see also Sanskrit ????? (kh?dati, “to chew, to bite”) and Persian ??????? (xâyidan, “to chew”).

Noun

snag f (genitive singular snaige, plural snagan)

1. sharp knock (sound)

Derived terms

• snagan-daraich

Mutation

References