Sneck

A sneck is a kind of latch. A listener in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says his British relatives sometimes use the term snecklifter to mean “a gift that will get you in the door at a dinner party.” This is part of a complete episode.

Transcript of “Sneck”

I’m reading about snakes.

Snakes.

Snakes.

Snakes.

No.

Are they small?

Why did it have to be snakes?

No, it’s sneck.

It’s S-N-E-C-K.

Do you know what a snake is?

It’s a latch.

It’s a dialect word from Scotland.

And so a sneck draw is a latch lifter.

That is a sly, crafty person.

Or a snack lifter can be a burglar.

It can be a ghost.

But we heard from Bob Gorin in Philadelphia who said that he has a distant relative in northern England who uses the word snack lifter in a different way.

He says that in his family they use snack lifter to mean a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates that you bring to the dinner party for the host.

It gets you in the door.

A snack lifter.

Isn’t that cool?

The reason I said snake is that in the online communities where people share cute photos of animals, S-N-E-K is often the kind of cutesy way of talking about snakes.

Snack.

Yeah, there are a lot of those, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So snacks, my snack.

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