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/ˈsnɪvəl/ · verb
(intransitive) To breathe heavily through the nose while it is congested with nasal mucus..
With stinking breath, swart-cheeks, and hanging chaps; With wrinkled neck; and stooping as she goes, With driveling mouth, and with a sniveling nose.
1794, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, London: J. Johnson, Volume 1, Section 16, Subsection 2, p. 149, […] in severe frosty weather, snivelling and tears are produced by the coldness and dryness of the air.
[…] he began to snivel, and wherever he tried to hide he was found out by the terrific explosions of his suppressed sneezes.
Let things come to the Worst; when we have Overturned the Government;—Polluted the very Altar, with our MASTERS BLOOD—Cheated the Publick, &c. ’Tis but to Whine and Snivel to the People; tell them we were mis-led, by Cardinall Appetites;
[…] after a good deal of sniveling and sobbing, she owned, that so far from being an heiress of a great fortune, she was no other than a common woman of the town, who had decoyed me into matrimony […]
I never snivel over trifles like that.
ANNE: Aunt Sara’s in the garden, snivelling in a deck chair. BASTON: What a hard child you are. ANNE: It’s no good being mushy, is it? It’s the truth that matters. and she is snivelling. BASTON: You could have said “crying.” ANNE: But crying’s quite a different thing.
This bye dialogue prevented my hearing what passed between the prisoner and Captain Thornton, but I heard the former snivel out, in a very subdued tone, “And ye’ll ask her to gang nae farther than just to shew ye where the MacGregor is?—Ohon! ohon!”
Use snivel when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Snivel means (intransitive) To breathe heavily through the nose while it is congested with nasal mucus..
Common synonyms include sniffle, beef, bellyache, bemoan.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
With stinking breath, swart-cheeks, and hanging chaps; With wrinkled neck; and stooping as she goes, With driveling mouth, and with a sniveling nose.
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