Asp

How to spell asp

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce asp

What does asp mean?

1. nounA small venomous snake of Egypt and North Africa, especially a species of cobra or viper.

Asp in a sentence

• The museum display warned that an asp can deliver a fatal bite.

• According to legend, an asp ended the life of the Egyptian queen.

Where does asp come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the ancient Greek aspis, the name for a venomous snake of Egypt and the Near East; curiously, the same Greek word also meant 'shield', and the snake may have been named for the broad, shield-like spread of a cobra's hood. The Romans took the word over as aspis, and it passed into Old French as aspe before reaching English. It entered the English language in the late 1300s, and Middle English writers often used the longer form aspis before it was clipped to the short, blunt 'asp' we use today. The snake won lasting fame as the creature that, by tradition, killed Cleopatra, which is why it appears so often in literature and art. Because the word is so short, the spelling holds no real trap; the only thing to remember is that it ends in a plain '-sp' with no silent letters.

How the word is built

• asp (from Greek aspis: a venomous snake, originally 'shield')