Find the word definition

Crossword clues for serpent

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
serpent
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
sea
▪ The fisherman cut their lines and set sail for port, but the sea serpent continued to follow them.
▪ In return Apollo sent a pestilence, and Poseidon the sea serpent.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ His tongue is a deadly poisonous serpent.
▪ I felt that serpents and other slimy creatures 53 were creeping around me.
▪ Some people interpret this to mean that the neocortex makes us human and we must suppress the limbic serpent in ourselves.
▪ The effect was beautiful, as even a serpent is beautiful once the fear of it is overcome.
▪ The entwined serpents forming a double helix gave birth to the Caduceus.
▪ The ram-headed serpent was one of the most impressive and typical of the Celtic cult animals.
▪ You will find two little serpents of gold fastened to the cloak.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Serpent

Serpent \Ser"pent\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Serpented; p. pr. & vb. n. Serpenting.] To wind like a serpent; to crook about; to meander. [R.] ``The serpenting of the Thames.''
--Evelyn.

Serpent

Serpent \Ser"pent\, v. t. To wind; to encircle. [R.]
--Evelyn.

Serpent

Serpent \Ser"pent\, n. [F., fr. L. serpens, -entis (sc. bestia), fr. serpens, p. pr. of serpere to creep; akin to Gr. ???, Skr. sarp, and perhaps to L. repere, E. reptile. Cf. Herpes.]

  1. (Zo["o]l.) Any reptile of the order Ophidia; a snake, especially a large snake. See Illust. under Ophidia.

    Note: The serpents are mostly long and slender, and move partly by bending the body into undulations or folds and pressing them against objects, and partly by using the free edges of their ventral scales to cling to rough surfaces. Many species glide swiftly over the ground, some burrow in the earth, others live in trees. A few are entirely aquatic, and swim rapidly. See Ophidia, and Fang.

  2. Fig.: A subtle, treacherous, malicious person.

  3. A species of firework having a serpentine motion as it passess through the air or along the ground.

  4. (Astron.) The constellation Serpens.

  5. (Mus.) A bass wind instrument, of a loud and coarse tone, formerly much used in military bands, and sometimes introduced into the orchestra; -- so called from its form. Pharaoh's serpent (Chem.), mercuric sulphocyanate, a combustible white substance which in burning gives off a poisonous vapor and leaves a peculiar brown voluminous residue which is expelled in a serpentine from. It is employed as a scientific toy. Serpent cucumber (Bot.), the long, slender, serpentine fruit of the cucurbitaceous plant Trichosanthes colubrina; also, the plant itself. Serpent eage (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of raptorial birds of the genera Circa["e]tus and Spilornis, which prey on serpents. They inhabit Africa, Southern Europe, and India. The European serpent eagle is Circa["e]tus Gallicus. Serpent eater. (Zo["o]l.)

    1. The secretary bird.

    2. An Asiatic antelope; the markhoor.

      Serpent fish (Zo["o]l.), a fish ( Cepola rubescens) with a long, thin, compressed body, and a band of red running lengthwise.

      Serpent star (Zo["o]l.), an ophiuran; a brittle star.

      Serpent's tongue (Paleon.), the fossil tooth of a shark; -- so called from its resemblance to a tongue with its root.

      Serpent withe (Bot.), a West Indian climbing plant ( Aristolochia odoratissima).

      Tree serpent (Zo["o]l.), any species of African serpents belonging to the family Dendrophid[ae].

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
serpent

c.1300, "limbless reptile," also the tempter in Gen. iii:1-5, from Old French serpent, sarpent "snake, serpent" (12c.), from Latin serpentem (nominative serpens) "snake; creeping thing," also the name of a constellation, from present participle of serpere "to creep," from PIE *serp- "to crawl, creep" (cognates: Sanskrit sarpati "creeps," sarpah "serpent;" Greek herpein "to creep," herpeton "serpent;" Albanian garper "serpent").\n

\nUsed figuratively of things spiral or regularly sinuous, such as a type of musical instrument (1730). Serpent's tongue as figurative of venomous or stinging speech is from mistaken medieval notion that the serpent's tongue was its "sting." Serpent's tongue also was a name given to fossil shark's teeth (c.1600).

Wiktionary
serpent

n. 1 A snake. 2 (label en musical instruments) An obsolete wind instrument in the brass family, whose shape is suggestive of a snake (http://en.wikipedi

  1. org/wiki/Serpent%20(instrument)). 3 (label en figurative) A subtle, treacherous, malicious person. 4 A kind of firework with a serpentine motion. v

  2. (label en obsolete) To wind; to encircle.

WordNet
serpent
  1. n. limbless scaly elongate reptile; some are venomous [syn: snake, ophidian]

  2. a firework that moves in serpentine manner when ignited

  3. an obsolete bass cornet; resembles a snake

Wikipedia
Serpent (band)

Serpent is a Swedish doom metal side project formed by Therion and Entombed members.

Serpent (video game)

is a Game Boy snake game developed by Naxat Soft. It was released in 1990 for the North American and Japanese markets.

Serpent (novel)

Serpent is the first book in the NUMA Files series of books co-written by best-selling author Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos, and was published in 1999. The main character of this series is Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala.

Serpent (roller coaster)

Serpent was a steel roller coaster at Six Flags AstroWorld. It was built by Arrow Dynamics in 1969, which made it the park's first roller coaster and the last junior mine train made by Arrow Dynamics. After AstroWorld closed at the end of the 2005 operating season on October 30, 2005, the ride was scrapped.

Category:Roller coasters introduced in 1969 Category:Former roller coasters in Texas Category:Roller coasters operated by Six Flags Category:Six Flags AstroWorld Category:Defunct roller coasters Category:Amusement rides that closed in 2005

Serpent

Serpent is a synonym for snake.

Serpent or The Serpent may also refer to:

Serpent (album)

Serpent is the fortieth album by Finnish experimental rock band Circle.

It was recorded on 19 October 2011 at The Croft, Bristol, England. The core four-piece Circle line-up is joined by the guitarist Julius Jääskeläinen. It contains a cover of the Brian Eno song " Here Come the Warm Jets".

Serpent (symbolism)

The serpent, or snake, is one of the oldest and most widespread mythological symbols. The word is derived from Latin serpens, a crawling animal or snake. Snakes have been associated with some of the oldest rituals known to humankind and represent dual expression of good and evil.

In some cultures, snakes were fertility symbols. For example, the Hopi people of North America performed an annual snake dance to celebrate the union of Snake Youth (a Sky spirit) and Snake Girl (an Underworld spirit) and to renew the fertility of Nature. During the dance, live snakes were handled and at the end of the dance the snakes were released into the fields to guarantee good crops. "The snake dance is a prayer to the spirits of the clouds, the thunder and the lightning, that the rain may fall on the growing crops." In other cultures , snakes symbolized the umbilical cord, joining all humans to Mother Earth. The Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars—sometimes twining around her sacred staff, as in ancient Crete—and they were worshiped as guardians of her mysteries of birth and regeneration.

Serpent (cipher)

Serpent is a symmetric key block cipher that was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) contest, where it was ranked second to Rijndael. Serpent was designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen.

Like other AES submissions, Serpent has a block size of 128 bits and supports a key size of 128, 192 or 256 bits. The cipher is a 32-round substitution-permutation network operating on a block of four 32-bit words. Each round applies one of eight 4-bit to 4-bit S-boxes 32 times in parallel. Serpent was designed so that all operations can be executed in parallel, using 32 bit slices. This maximizes parallelism, but also allows use of the extensive cryptanalysis work performed on DES.

Serpent took a conservative approach to security, opting for a large security margin: the designers deemed 16 rounds to be sufficient against known types of attack, but specified 32 rounds as insurance against future discoveries in cryptanalysis. The official NIST report on AES competition classified Serpent as having a high security margin along with MARS and Twofish, in contrast to the adequate security margin of RC6 and Rijndael (currently AES). In final voting, Serpent had the least number of negative votes among the finalists, but scored second place overall because Rijndael had substantially more positive votes, the deciding factor being that Rijndael allowed for a far more efficient software implementation.

The Serpent cipher algorithm is in the public domain and has not been patented. The reference code is public domain software and the optimized code is under GPL. There are no restrictions or encumbrances whatsoever regarding its use. As a result, anyone is free to incorporate Serpent in their software (or hardware implementations) without paying license fees.

Serpent (instrument)

The serpent is the bass wind instrument, descended from the cornett, and a distant ancestor of the tuba, with a mouthpiece like a brass instrument but side holes like a woodwind. It is usually a long cone bent into a snakelike shape, hence the name. The serpent is closely related to the cornett, although it is not part of the cornett family, due to the absence of a thumb hole. It is generally made out of wood, with walnut being a particularly popular choice. The outside is covered with dark brown or black leather. Despite wooden construction and the fact that it has fingerholes rather than valves, it is usually classed as a brass; the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification places it alongside trumpets.

The serpent's range varies according to the instrument and the player, but typically covers one from two octaves below middle C to at least half an octave above middle C.

Serpent (comics)

Serpent (Cul Borson) is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.

Serpent (software)

Serpent is a continuous-energy Monte Carlo reactor physics code capable for highly detailed, three-dimensional burnup calculation. It is under current development at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland since 2004 under the original name of "Probabilistic Scattering Game". The code was originally developed with two-dimensional lattice physics calculations in mind; however, the code provides that the geometry can be generally expanded to three-dimensions.

The Serpent code makes use of an energy-grid restructuring of cross-sections and delta-ray tracking for speed increases during the neutron transport simulation.

The Serpent code is often used for generating cross-sections for deterministic reactor physics codes.

Usage examples of "serpent".

With officers, sergeants, and corporals amplifying the simple command, the 47th North Carolina became a long gray serpent that wound its way out of the encampment, as if shedding a confining winter skin, and tramped north up the road toward Orange Court House.

As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.

A tiny little mark with the faintest suggestion of a flair at the tail of it, a bit of artistry to it, a mark like a serpent about to strike.

As the Serpent extends over both signs, Libra and Scorpio, it has been the gate through which souls descend, during the whole time that those two signs in succession marked the Autumnal Equinox.

We are at once reminded of the Sun at the new year represented by a child sitting on a lotus, and of the relations of the Sun of Spring with the Autumnal Serpent, pursued by and pursuing him, and in conjunction with him.

Scorpion or Serpent stings the Bull and Orion at Autumnal Equinox, 466-l.

Virgo and Bootes at the Autumnal Equinox introduce the serpent, 455-l.

And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.

Midgard Serpent, and if we can ever reach back far enough we can house a Brontosaur and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Only empty darkness met his eyes, into which the serpent had dragged a mangled, tattered object that only faintly resembled a human body.

Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust, Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.

In Persia, at a later day, it was the serpent, which, personified as Ahriman, was the Evil Principle of the religion of Zoroaster.

The Caduceus, borne by Hermes or Mercury, and also by Cybele, Minerva, Anubis, Hercules Ogmius the God of the Celts, and the personified Constellation Virgo, was a winged wand, entwined by two serpents.

Typhon, his hands and feet horrid with serpents, and whose habitat in the Egyptian planisphere was under Scorpio, confined him in a chest and flung him into the Nile, under the 17th degree of Scorpio.

Zanthodon refer to the great plesiosaurus of the remote Jurassic, which some authorities consider to be the origin of the legend of the sea serpent.