Definition of "snivel"
snivel
verb
third-person singular simple present snivels, present participle (UK) snivelling or (US) sniveling, simple past and past participle (UK) snivelled or (US) sniveled
(intransitive) To breathe heavily through the nose while it is congested with nasal mucus.
Quotations
[…] a Hagg, a Fury by my side; / With hollow, yellow teeth (or none perhaps) / With stinking breath, swart-cheeks, and hanging chaps; / With wrinkled neck; and stooping as she goes, / With driveling mouth, and with a sniveling nose.
1611, Josuah Sylvester (translator), Du Bartas His Deuine Weekes and Workes, London, Book 4, Week 2, Day 4, p. 623
(derogatory, intransitive) To cry while sniffling; to whine or complain while crying.
Quotations
Let things come to the Worst; when we have Overturned the Government;—Polluted the very Altar, with our MASTERS BLOOD—Cheated the Publick, &c. ’Tis but to Whine and Snivel to the People; tell them we were mis-led, by Cardinall Appetites;
1660, Roger L’Estrange, “No Fool to the Old Fool”, in A Short View of Some Remarkable Transactions, London: Henry Brome, page 95
[…] after a good deal of sniveling and sobbing, she owned, that so far from being an heiress of a great fortune, she was no other than a common woman of the town, who had decoyed me into matrimony […]
1748, Tobias Smollett, chapter 61, in The Adventures of Roderick Random, volume 2, London: J. Osborn, page 267
ANNE: Aunt Sara’s in the garden, snivelling in a deck chair.BASTON: What a hard child you are.ANNE: It’s no good being mushy, is it? It’s the truth that matters. and she is snivelling.BASTON: You could have said “crying.”ANNE: But crying’s quite a different thing.
1957, Graham Greene, The Potting Shed, New York: Viking, act 1, scene 1, page 17
(derogatory, transitive) To say (something) while sniffling or crying.
Quotations
This by-dialogue prevented my hearing what passed between the prisoner and Captain Thornton; but I heard the former snivel out, in a very subdued tone, “And ye’ll ask her to gang nae farther than just to show ye where the MacGregor is?—Ohon! ohon!”
1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter XIII, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown
noun
plural snivels
Quotations
[…] after a bit of a snivel, for you know I am a woman in these matters, I had her treated with all decency, and then committed her to Davy Jones’s locker; and for want of a chaplain, I said the burial service myself […]
1792, Charles Dibdin, chapter 5, in Hannah Hewit: or, The Female Crusoe, volume 1, London, page 50
Quotations
[A]nd if thou entreate me not the fayrer, (hope of amendment preventeth many ruines) truſt me, I will batter thy carrion to dirt, whence thou camſt, and ſquiſe thy braine to ſnivell whereof it was curdled; […]
1593, Gabriel Harvey, Pierces Supererogation: Or A New Prayse of the Old Asse, London: […] Iohn Wolfe; republished as John Payne Collier, editor, Pierces Supererogation: Or A New Prayse of the Old Asse. A Preparative to Certaine Larger Discourses, Intituled Nashes S. Fame (Miscellaneous Tracts. Temp. Eliz. & Jac. I; no. 8), [London: [s.n.], 1870], page 155
On quitting this den of furious heat, I got a sight of a lair, exceeding all the rest I had seen in Hell, but one, in frightful stinking filthiness, where was a herd of accursed drunken swine, disgorging and swallowing, swallowing and disgorging, continually and without rest, the most loathsome snivel.
1860, Ellis Wynne, translated by George Borrow, The Sleeping Bard; or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell, London: John Murray, page 86