Adder
the common European viper, Vipera berus.
any of various other venomous or harmless snakes resembling the viper.
a person or thing that .
Historical Examples
And swift as an adder Muldoon kicked him just below the knee cap.
Lease to Doomsday Lee Archer
It is more venemous than the adder, it is more destructive than hebenon or madragora.
Imogen William Godwin
In the majority of viper or adder bites the constitutional disturbance is slight and transient, if it appears at all.
Manual of Surgery Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
The good Book says, ‘it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder!’
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe
Now it was an adder coiled up in the warm sunshine on a little dry bare clump among some dead furze.
The Weathercock George Manville Fenn
Supporters,—not captives nor victims; the Cockatrice and adder.
Our Fathers Have Told Us John Ruskin
adder saw him some days back in a brown consultation near his club with Captain May.
Lord Ormont and his Aminta, Complete George Meredith
The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he is mud, and will be mud.
Our Fathers Have Told Us John Ruskin
It is the double-distilled extract of nux vomica, ratsbane, and adder’s tongue.
New Tabernacle Sermons Thomas De Witt Talmage
Saxham started as though an adder had flashed its fangs through his boot.
The Dop Doctor Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
noun
Also called viper. a common viper, Vipera berus, that is widely distributed in Europe, including Britain, and Asia and is typically dark greyish in colour with a black zigzag pattern along the back
any of various similar venomous or nonvenomous snakes
noun
a person or thing that adds, esp a single element of an electronic computer, the function of which is to add a single digit of each of two inputs
n.
Old English næddre “a snake, serpent, viper,” from West Germanic *nædro “a snake” (cf. Old Norse naðra, Middle Dutch nadre, Old High German natra, German Natter, Gothic nadrs), from PIE root *netr- (cf. Latin natrix “water snake,” probably by folk-association with nare “to swim;” Old Irish nathir, Welsh neidr “adder”).
The 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.”
(Ps. 140:3; Rom. 3:13, “asp”) is the rendering of, (1.) Akshub (“coiling” or “lying in wait”), properly an asp or viper, found only in this passage. (2.) Pethen (“twisting”), a viper or venomous serpent identified with the cobra (Naja haje) (Ps. 58:4; 91:13); elsewhere “asp.” (3.) Tziphoni (“hissing”) (Prov. 23:32); elsewhere rendered “cockatrice,” Isa. 11:8; 14:29; 59:5; Jer. 8:17, as it is here in the margin of the Authorized Version. The Revised Version has “basilisk.” This may have been the yellow viper, the Daboia xanthina, the largest and most dangerous of the vipers of Palestine. (4.) Shephiphon (“creeping”), occurring only in Gen. 49:17, the small speckled venomous snake, the “horned snake,” or cerastes. Dan is compared to this serpent, which springs from its hiding-place on the passer-by.
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