ˈsnake-head
Also snakehead.
[snake n.]
1. a. The North American plant Chelone glabra.
| 1845–50 A. H. Lincoln Lect. Bot. App. 88/2 Chelone glabra (snake-head). 1846–50 A. Wood Class-bk. Bot. 400 Snake⁓head. Salt-rheum Weed... A plant of brooks and wet places,..with flowers shaped much like the head of a snake. |
b. The snake's head or common fritillary.
| 1884 G. Allen Philistia I. 146 ‘Has your brother ever sent you any of the fritillaries?’ ‘What? snake-heads?’ |
2. U.S. (See quots. and cf. snake's-head 3). Now Hist.
| 1845 Yankee (Boston) 9 Aug. 3/4 Mr. John F. Wall..was near being killed..by what is technically called a snakehead. 1848 Bartlett Dict. Amer. 315 Snake-head,..the end of an iron rail, which sometimes is thrown up in front of the car wheels, and passes through the cars. 1848–71 W. M. Gillespie Man. Road-making 305 Most American roads with longitudinal timbers have been laid with plate rails, so thin that their ends sometimes spring up so as to form ‘snake-heads’. |
3. A representation of a snake's head. Also attrib.
| 1865 Kingsley Herew. iii, Two ships..whose long lines and snake-heads..bore witness to the piratical habits of their owner. 1887 Archit. Soc. Dict. VII. 96/2 Snake head Molding. |
4. A tropical marine or fresh-water carnivorous fish of the family Channidæ, esp. one of the genus Ophiocephalus, found in Africa or Asia, usually mottled grey, brown, or black in colour.
| 1891 in Cent. Dict. 1905 D. S. Jordan Guide Study of Fishes II. xxi. 370 Snake-head mullets..seem to us nearer the labyrinthine fishes. 1961 E. S. Herald Living Fishes of World 244/2 Snakeheads will live for many hours and sometimes days out of water. |