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Credit for snark is often given to Lewis Carroll, on the basis of his having written a poem with this word in the title, back in the 1870s. The modern snark, however, is a back-formation (“a word formed by subtraction of a real or supposed affix from an already existing longer word”), a class of words that includes burgle and back-stab. It comes from taking the longer word snarky and subtracting the -y. Snarky emerged in English around the turn of the 20th century, initially with the meaning of “snappish, crotchety,” and then later took on the sense of “sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner.” The noun snark is a much more recent addition to the language, arising in the 1990s. It was preceded by the verb snark, “to make an irreverent or sarcastic comment, to say something snarky,” which dates to the late 1980s.
Examples of snark in a Sentence
Bill Goodykoontz, AZCentral.com, 27 Oct. 2025
October 14, 2025 Today’s news of Maria Grazia Chiuri’s return to fashion has, predictably, sparked some snark.
—Luke Leitch, Vogue, 14 Oct. 2025
Angie Han, HollywoodReporter, 13 Oct. 2025
This false sense of security is amplified by Kat being composed enough to snark at her rescuer seconds before catastrophe, in contrast to most of Death’s victims, who spend their last moments in abject terror.
—Gayle Sequeira, Vulture, 16 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for snark
Cite this Entry
“Snark.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snark. Accessed 4 Nov. 2025.
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