Snow is snowing in this snizy season, even when you are out visiting. Be the house and the company ever so snod, and the room ever so filled with snapperdols, you will sooner or later have to snabble your snacks and slip out into the snivy snizeler, and soon enough you will snuist and snite a snevit until at last you can sneak into your own snug, snaste the candle, snerdle with your snugglebunny, and snouse… and hopefully not snuzzle.
Oh, yes, I’ve been scrolling through The English Dialect Dictionary, a 1905 work available in six PDFs on archive.organd also on a searchable site, EDD Online. It’s not too early for a few lexical stocking stuffers, is it? This batch all have that lovely sn– onset, so commonly (but not universally!) associated with the nose and mouth and with grasping and catching. I pulled out a short set of relevant words collected from around various parts of England (there are quite a few more sn– words, as you will find when you explore the EDD for yourself).
No one would use all of these in a sentence, not least because they’re not all from the same dialect! But even word nerds are allowed toys. Here are the definitions of all the ones I snaffled, quoted directly. I leave to you to see if you think the sounds suit the senses.
snabble: “To eat hurriedly or greedily: to devour.”
snapperdol: “A gaily-dressed woman.”
snaste: “The burning wick or snuff of a candle”; “To snuff a candle.”
snerdle: “To nestle closely; to wrap up comfortably in bed; to go comfortably off to sleep.”
snevit: “The act of blowing the nose.”
snite: “To blow the nose, esp. with the finger and thumb; to pull the nose”; “To snuff a candle.”
snivy: “Of the weather: raw, sleety, cold; foggy with rime.”
snizeler: “A biting wind; a cold, biting day.”
snizy: “Of the weather: cold, cutting, raw.”
snod: “Smooth, even, level; sleek, soft, velvety”; “Sly, soft-spoken; suave, plausible; demure”; “Neat, tidy, trim, spruce”; “Snug, comfortable, easy”; “Clever, careful, tactful.”
snouse: “To sleep.”
snuist: “To sniff.”
snuzzle: “To nestle”; “To rout about with the nose”; “To sniff; to breathe heavily and noisily”; “A heavy, noisy inspiration; a snore.”
Sesquiotica 