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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

serpent.

A snake.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsɜːpənt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝpənt/General-American
  1. A snake.

    archaic · literary
  2. A snake. Alternative letter-case form of Serpent.

    alt-of · archaic · literary
  3. A snake-like creature, such as a sea serpent.

  4. A person who is subtle, malicious, treacherous, or deceiving.

    figuratively
  5. An obsolete wind instrument in the brass family, whose shape is suggestive of a snake (Wikipedia article).

  6. A kind of firework with a serpentine motion.

Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *serp- Proto-Indo-European *sérpeti Proto-Italic *serpō Latin serpō Latin serpēns Old French serpentbor. Middle English serpent English serpent From Middle English serpent, from Old French serpent (“snake, serpent”), from Latin serpēns (“snake”), present active participle of serpere (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-Italic *serpō, from Proto-Indo-European *serp-. In this sense, displaced native Old English nǣdre (“snake, serpent”), whence Modern English adder. Compare Sanskrit सर्प (sarpa, “snake”), which is a descendant of the same Proto-Indo-European word as serpent.

verb/ˈsɜːpənt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɝpənt/General-American
  1. To wind or meander

    intransitive · obsolete
  2. To encircle.

    obsolete · transitive
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *serp- Proto-Indo-European *sérpeti Proto-Italic *serpō Latin serpō Latin serpēns Old French serpentbor. Middle English serpent English serpent From Middle English serpent, from Old French serpent (“snake, serpent”), from Latin serpēns (“snake”), present active participle of serpere (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-Italic *serpō, from Proto-Indo-European *serp-. In this sense, displaced native Old English nǣdre (“snake, serpent”), whence Modern English adder. Compare Sanskrit सर्प (sarpa, “snake”), which is a descendant of the same Proto-Indo-European word as serpent.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.