Noun

(en noun)

Any of very many animals (either hermaphroditic or nonhermaphroditic), of the class Gastropoda , having a coiled shell.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=7 citation , passage=‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’}}

(informal, by extension) A slow person; a sluggard.

(engineering) A spiral cam, or a flat piece of metal of spirally curved outline, used for giving motion to, or changing the position of, another part, as the hammer tail of a striking clock.

(military, historical) A tortoise or testudo; a movable roof or shed to protect besiegers.

* Vegetius (in translation)

They had also all manner of gynes [engines]

The pod of the snail clover.

Noun

(en noun)

A divine and supernatural messenger from a deity, or other divine entity.

* Ben Jonson

The dear good angel of the Spring, / The nightingale.

(Abrahamic tradition) The lowest order of angels, below virtues.

A selfless person.

You made me breakfast in bed, you little angel .

(military slang) An altitude, measured in thousands of feet.

Climb to angels sixty.

An affluent individual who provides capital for a startup, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity.

A minister or pastor of a church, as in the Seven Asiatic churches.

* Bible, Rev. ii. 1

Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write.

(obsolete) Attendant spirit; genius; demon.

(Shakespeare)

(historical) An ancient gold coin of England, bearing the figure of the archangel Michael, and varying in value from six shillings and eightpence to ten shillings.