adder

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small venomous snake of the viper family

   An adder slid silently across the sun-warmed path.

Simplified etymology

Adder comes from Old English nædre, “snake,” which became medieval nadder. From about 1300, speakers redivided a nadder as an adder, causing the initial n to disappear. The word later narrowed to a particular venomous snake, also called the viper, while the older n survives in the northern dialect form nedder.

From Middle English addre, from Old English nǣdre ('snake'), from Proto-Germanic *nēdrǭ; the initial n was lost through misdivision of 'a nadder' as 'an adder'. From the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)neh₁- ('to spin, twist').

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary