snide
/snʌɪd
/adjective
1Derogatory or mocking in an indirect way: snide remarks about my mother...
- I go to the counter and give the cheque to a guy who definitely did not have enough sleep last night and was in a mood for nasty snide remarks and evil glares.
- Some marched past him, giving him anything from a passing glance to a narrow eyed stare of contempt and a snide remark.
- When my mum wasn't in the room he would always say snide remarks, taunting me.
Synonyms
disparaging, derogatory, deprecating, deprecatory, denigratory, insulting, vituperative, disapproving, contemptuous;
mocking, taunting, ridiculing, sneering, jeering, scoffing;
scornful, derisive, sarcastic, caustic, biting, bitchy, shrewish, spiteful, hurtful, nasty, mean
British informal sarky
rare mordacious
2chiefly North American (Of a person) devious and underhand: a snide divorce lawyer...
- I mean, I'm not beautiful, so why am I being so snide in my head about others?
- In fact, the man had attempted to court her in college, but being the snide women she was, she denied him - until he struck gold in the stock markets.
- He was snide too, bringing up how much of a hound Mitch was and how that might unhinge any woman's mind.
3 informal, chiefly British Counterfeit; inferior: snide Rolex watches
noun informal
An unpleasant or underhand person: he’s not a snide, he’s better than most
Derivatives
snidely
- With almost malevolent emphasis, newscasters snidely tell us that we're too fat, citing facts or pseudo-facts from this institute or that institute.
- And I ask that question in dead earnest, not snidely.
- Too late I remembered the Spanish for ‘very small’ and began to play out alternative scenarios in which I snidely put him in his place.
snideness
- Sure, politics has been filled with snideness, ridicule and finger pointing probably since the first caveman was elected keeper of the flame, but it's reached the point of combustion.
- If this had been a high-powered business lunch and there was an important meeting to get to, then maybe snideness and rudeness would be called for.
- Why resort to snideness over the basic laying down of facts?
snidey
- In hiding, his only human contact are glamour-chasing girl friends, snidey, shady minders and the builders renovating his rambling house.
- Over the years we sat in many a drizzly car park on the dark perimeter of some God forsaken industrial town, solemnly munching sandwiches and making snidey remarks about salesmen.
- By laughing at a snidey biog such as this we collude in the destruction of an already terribly injured woman.
Origin
Mid 19th century (in sense 3 of the adjective): of unknown origin.