Snag

How to spell snag

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce snag

What does snag mean?

1. nounAn unexpected difficulty or obstacle that holds up a plan.
2. verbTo catch, tear, or pull something on a sharp or rough projection.
3. verbTo grab, obtain, or secure something quickly, often before others can.

Snag in a sentence

• noun

  The whole project hit a snag when the supplier ran out of parts.

• verb

  Be careful not to snag your jumper on that rusty nail.

• verb

  Try to snag a window seat before the train fills up.

• noun

  Booking the flights early should help us avoid any last-minute snag.

• verb

  The fishing line can snag on a submerged branch and break.

• verb

  She managed to snag the last discounted ticket online.

Where does snag come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Snag entered English in the late 1500s from a Scandinavian source, related to the Old Norse word snagi, meaning a peg or a clothes hook, and to dialectal Norwegian snag or snage, meaning a sharp point or projection. The earliest English uses described a short projecting stump, a jagged broken branch, or a tooth left standing in the gum, all things that stick out and catch on whatever passes. From the idea of a hidden underwater tree stump that could rip the hull of a boat came the familiar figurative sense of an unexpected obstacle or hitch in a plan. The fabric sense, a pulled thread caught on something rough, grew naturally from the same image of a point that snatches and tears. The casual American sense of quickly grabbing or securing something is a later, informal extension of the same catching action, and the short, blunt spelling has stayed remarkably stable since the word reflects its plain Norse roots.

How the word is built

• snag (a projecting stump or point that catches), of Scandinavian origin; no prefix or suffix