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Nark vs Snark - What's the difference?

nark | snark |

As nouns the difference between nark and snark

is that nark is a police spy or informer while snark is snide remarks.

As verbs the difference between nark and snark

is that nark is to serve or behave as a spy or informer while snark is to express oneself in a snarky fashion.

As a proper noun Snark is

a fictional animal in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.

nark

English

(wikipedia nark)

Etymology 1

From (etyl) nak.

Alternative forms

* narc

Noun

(en noun)
  • (British, slang) A police spy or informer.
  • * 1912 , , Act I,
    • It’s a—well, it’s a copper’s nark , as you might say. What else would you call it? A sort of informer.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (slang) To serve or behave as a spy or informer.
  • (slang) To annoy or irritate.
    • It really narks me when people smoke in restaurants.
  • (slang) To complain.
    • He narks in my ear all day, moaning about his problems.
  • (transitive, slang, often imperative) To stop.
    • Nark it! I hear someone coming!
    Synonyms
    * * tattle

    Etymology 2

    See narc

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (narcotics officer).

    • References

    * * Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.

    Anagrams

    *

    snark

    English

    Etymology 1

    Compare Low German snarken, North Frisian snarke, Swedish snarka, and English snort, and snore. Noun sense of “snide remarks” derived from snarky (1906), from snark (v.) "to snort" (1866) by onomatopoiea. (en)

    Noun

    (-)
  • Snide remarks.
    • Synonyms
    * (snide comments) sarcasm
    Related terms
    * snarkiness * snarky

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To express oneself in a snarky fashion
  • * {{quote-news, 2009, January 23, Dwight Garner, The Mahvelous and the Damned, New York Times citation
    • , passage=Other would-be Bright Young People, Lytton Strachey snarked , seemed to have “just a few feathers where brains should be.” }}
  • (obsolete) To snort.
    • Derived terms
    * snarker

    Etymology 2

    From (Snark), coined by (Lewis Carroll) as a nonce word in 1874 (The Hunting of the Snark), about the quest for an elusive creature. In sense of “a type of mathematical graph”, named as such in 1976 by (Martin Gardner) for their elusiveness.Martin Gardner, (Mathematical Games), (Scientific American), issue 234, volume 4, pp. 126–130, 1976.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (mathematics) A graph in which every node has three branches, and the edges cannot be coloured in fewer than four colours without two edges of the same colour meeting at a point.
  • (particle) A fluke or unrepeatable result or detection in an experiment.
    • Cabrera's Valentine's Day monopole detection or some extremely energetic cosmic rays could be examples of snarks .

    References

    Anagrams

    * English eponyms