Mahendra Singh, author the wonderful blog
The Hunting of the Snark, asked about the etymology of
snark. I found nothing conclusive, but you might enjoy the ride. Try not to get your bowsprit mixed with your rudder on the way. Ready let's go!
My Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology says
imaginary animal invented by 'Lewis Carroll' (C.L. Dodgson) in 'The Hunting of the Snark', 1876.
Is that it? There's gotta be more to it than that!
snark meaning "to snort" dates from 1866 according to the
Online Etymology Dictionary, but I don't know the source of this. This easily predates 1875, when most of
the poem was written (at least according to
The Life of Lewis Carroll by Florence Becker Lennon, 1962).
Sources agree that
snarky, meaning
"crotchety, snappish" or
"irritable or short-tempered; irascible", is derived from the verb
snark "to annoy" or "to nag". The earliest citation for
snarky is from
Edith Nesbit in 1906.
1906 E. NESBIT Railway Children ii. 49 Don’t be snarky, Peter. It isn’t our fault.
Since words tend to show up in speech before they show up in writing, it is possible that
snarky was around when Carroll wrote his poem. Or
snark, for which the earliest citation is from 1882.
snark, 2. intr. and trans. To find fault (with), to nag.
1882 Jamieson’s Sc. Dict. IV. 314/2 To Snark,..to fret, grumble, or find fault with one. 1904 E. NESBIT Phœnix & Carpet x. 185 He remembered how Anthea had refrained from snarking him about tearing the carpet.
There are two possible derivations for
snark. According to
Merriam-Webster,
snark "to annoy" is perhaps an alternation of
nark "to irritate". (More about
nark below). The
American Heritage Dictionary says of
snarky: "From dialectal
snark, to nag, from
snark,
snork, to snore, snort, from Dutch and Low German
snorken, of imitative origin."
Fernando Soto, in The Consumption of the Snark and the Decline of Nonsense: A Medico-Linguistic Reading of Carroll’s ‘Fitful Agony’ (in
The Carrollian 8) mentions the word
snarker "a cinder", as in "The cake's burnt to a snarker" (from The English Dialect Dictionary (vols. V), p. 572).
Mahendra says
It's been long debated how LC came up with the word, it may be a portmanteau of shark & snail, perhaps "flavored" by a (collective) unconscious germanic memory?
There are many Germanic words containing the phonestheme
sn- and having to do with the nose. Pokorny connects
snorken with Proto-Indo-European
*sner- "expressive root of various verbs for making noises". This is the source of German
schnarren "to buzz", and also
snorkel from German
schnarchen "to snore",
snarl from Middle Low German
snarren,
sneer, and perhaps
Norn, from Old Norse (as in "the whisperer"). And also Norwegian-Swedish
snerka "to snort", Swedish
snurka "to groan", Old Norse
snǫrgla "to groan", Norwegian-Swedish
snarva "to growl, bare one's teeth".
There is also
*snu-, a form limited to Germanic languages, and imitative of words connected with the nose. This apparently gives us
snot, snout, schnoz, snuffle, sniff, snip, snap, snub, and
snatch. To make things even more confusing,
snore,
snort and
sneeze are from PIE
*pneu- "to breathe" - Old English
fnora and
fnēosan. Compare Old Norse
fnȳsa "to pant, sniff, snort", Middle High German
pfnusen "to pant, sniff, snort, sneeze".
The
sn- phonestheme could have influenced Carroll's choice, but unfortunately the poem is silent on the subject of the Snark's nose, and lacks any other
sn- words in connection with the Snark (altho the Bandersnatch's jaws "Went savagely snapping around").
The Urban Dictionary says of
snark: "Combination of "snide" and "remark". Sarcastic comment(s)." But I'd trust the Urban Dictionary as far as I'd trust a very untrustworthy thing.
Now,
nark. This is the other possible source of
snark "to annoy", if it's not derived from
snorken. Wordorigins has a good
history of
nark. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (1993) says (I'm omitting the first sense because it's "mainly Austral and NZ"):
2 Brit a A police informer or decoy. 1860-.
b A policeman. 1861-.
verb 3 trans. To annoy, exasperate; often in passive 1888-.
4 trans. To stop; mainly in imperative in the phr. nark it. 1889-.
6 intr. To complain, grumble. 1916-.
[From Romany nāk nose.]
Wordorigins points out that the derivation from Romani is problematic, but that it is the most likely one. Romani
nāk would be related to Hindi
नाक nāk, Prakrit
ṇakka, and Sanskrit
नर्क narka, all meaning "nose". Probably also Sindhi
نَڪُ naku , Kashmiri
नाख् nākh, Panjabi
ਨੱਕ nakk, Gujarati
નાક nāk.
According to Watkins, these are all from Indic
*nakka-, an expressive form of PIE
*nas- "nose", which makes
nark cognate with
nose! Compare Sanskrit
नस् nas, Latin
nāsum, German
nüschen "to dig with the snout", English
nose,
nuzzle, Russian
нюхать njuxat' "to snuffle, sniff, smell".
Snarkskii seems to be a Slavic surname, for which the American spelling might be
Snarsky.
The Snark Avenue Theatre shows late-night movies in
Daniel Pinkwater's novels
The Snarkout Boys and the Avacado of Death and
The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror. "Snarking out" means sneaking out in the middle of the night to watch movies. Also check out
Lizard Music - no snarks, but a great book.
Nothing conclusive, so no conclusion.
Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."
Update:
more snarkian etymology.