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adder
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
adder
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As quick as a striking adder, the soldier's fingers fastened around her arm.
▪ During the summer, adders can often be found basking in the morning sunshine.
▪ Even a broken worm can kill, if it happens to be an adder.
▪ The adder is uniquely equipped for that role.
▪ The deaf adder of appetite Coiled under.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Adder

Adder \Ad"der\, n. [OE. addere, naddere, eddre, AS. n[ae]dre, adder, snake; akin to OS. nadra, OHG. natra, natara, Ger. natter, Goth. nadrs, Icel. na[eth]r, masc., na[eth]ra, fem.: cf. W. neidr, Gorn. naddyr, Ir. nathair, L. natrix, water snake. An adder is for a nadder.]

  1. A serpent. [Obs.] ``The eddre seide to the woman.''
    --Wyclif. Gen. iii. 4. )

  2. (Zo["o]l.)

    1. A small venomous serpent of the genus Vipera. The common European adder is the Vipera berus or Pelias berus. The puff adders of Africa are species of Clotho.

    2. In America, the term is commonly applied to several harmless snakes, as the milk adder, puffing adder, etc.

    3. Same as Sea Adder.

      Note: In the sculptures the appellation is given to several venomous serpents, -- sometimes to the horned viper ( Cerastles).

Adder

Adder \Add"er\, n. [See Add.] One who, or that which, adds; esp., a machine for adding numbers.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
adder

Old English næddre "a snake, serpent, viper," from Proto-Germanic *nædro "a snake" (cognates: Old Norse naðra, Middle Dutch nadre, Old High German natra, German Natter, Gothic nadrs), from PIE root *netr- (cognates: Latin natrix "water snake," probably by folk-association with nare "to swim;" Old Irish nathir, Welsh neidr "adder").\n

\nThe modern form represents a faulty separation 14c.-16c. into an adder, for which see also apron, auger, nickname, humble pie, umpire. Nedder is still a northern English dialect form. Folklore connection with deafness is via Psalm lviii:1-5. The adder is said to stop up its ears to avoid hearing the snake charmer called in to drive it away. Adderbolt (late 15c.) was a former name for "dragonfly."

Wiktionary
adder

Etymology 1 n. 1 (context obsolete English) A snake. 2 A name loosely applied to various snakes more or less resembling the viper; a viper. 3 (context chiefly British English) A small venomous serpent of the genus ''Vipera''. The (vern: common European adder) is the (taxlink Vipera berus species noshow=1). The puff adders of Africa are species of the genus (taxlink Oecobius genus noshow=1). 4 (context US Canada English) Any of several small nonvenomous snakes resembling the adder, such as the milk snake. 5 The sea-stickleback or adder-fish. Etymology 2

n. 1 Someone who or something which performs arithmetic addition; a machine for adding numbers. 2 Something which adds or increases.

WordNet
adder
  1. n. a person who adds numbers

  2. a machine that adds numbers

  3. small terrestrial viper common in northern Eurasia [syn: common viper, Vipera berus]

Wikipedia
Adder

Adder may refer to:

Adder (electronics)

An adder, also called summer, is a digital circuit that performs addition of numbers. In many computers and other kinds of processors, adders are used not only in the arithmetic logic units, but also in other parts of the processor, where they are used to calculate addresses, table indices, increment and decrement operators, and similar operations.

Although adders can be constructed for many numerical representations, such as binary-coded decimal or excess-3, the most common adders operate on binary numbers. In cases where two's complement or ones' complement is being used to represent negative numbers, it is trivial to modify an adder into an adder–subtractor. Other signed number representations require more logic around the basic adder.

Usage examples of "adder".

He may meet with hardened and obstinate ceremonialists, who, like deaf adders, refuse to listen to the truth of liberty, and cry up, enjoin, and urge on us their ceremonies, as if they could justify us without faith.

It is more venemous than the adder, it is more destructive than hebenon or madragora.

But natural selection can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other species, as we see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs are deposited in the living bodies of other insects.

Desio finished with the slow care a man might use in the presence of a coiled pusk adder.

Op haar door sfinxen getorste rustbank lag Kleopatra, overgolfd door een vloed van lokken, den dood reeds nabij, terwijl zich een adder om heur arm kronkelde.

The Zamorian traitor was a smiling, laughing villain, dear to a Turanian heart Small, lean, lithe, and swaggering, handsome and reckless as a young god, Vardanes was an amusing drinking companion and a devilish fighter but as cold-hearted and untrustworthy as an adder.

But der is no svamp adders in India, vich has puzzled me greatly, Herr Doctor.

Just so have the swifts left the hollow trees and taken to my chimney, the phoebe to my pigpen, the swallow to my barn loft, the vireo to my lilac bush, the screech owls to my apple trees, the red squirrel for its nest to my ice-house, and the flat-nosed adder to the sandy knoll by my beehives.

De Bunzingen, Hermelijnen, Uilen en Valken, de Buizerden, Raven en Ooievaars loeren op hem, terwijl hij de aarde uit zijne loopgraven naar buiten werkt, de Wezel vervolgt hem zelfs in zijne gangen, waar hij ook niet zelden een slachtoffer wordt van de Adder.

This section of Otaria was thick with both venom hunters and constrictors-from the small but lethal jade adder to the medium-sized razorback rattler to the enormous rock python that could swallow a man whole.

Op haar door sfinxen getorste rustbank lag Kleopatra, overgolfd door een vloed van lokken, den dood reeds nabij, terwijl zich een adder om heur arm kronkelde.

Across the pavilion Electra wore an expression that made her death adders seem almost kind.

The country annex, the rest porch, the schlagball field, and the chickenwire fence running from end to end were surrounded on all sides by the dense, silent, or rustling Saskoschin Forest, a mixed woodland containing wild boar, badgers, adders, and a boundary line that cut across it.

I have always warmed to the beauty of human hair, that silken and undulating part of a body, but the headdresses of most of our women are towers, labyrinths, ships, or nests of adders.

In her Zoo for Happiness one could find almost every known kind of a snake - enormous king cobras over twenty-five feet long, Egyptian cobras, adders, copperheads, vipers, Australian black snakes, green mambas, tiger snakes, fer-de-lances, moccasins, all varieties of rattlesnakes and many others.