Dictionary

sand asp en · NOUN

Meanings

1. The horned viper or sand viper (Vipera ammodytes).
   • the Saint began / Upon his flute to breathe his magic tune, / Such as the serpent-charmers use to charm / The sand-asps forth, 1876, Walter Thornbury, “The Legend of St. Vitus”, in Historical and Legendary Ballads and Songs, London: Chatto and Windus, page 44:
   • For several days they roll around in style, and then the inevitable snafu strikes like a sand asp: it turns out the new Humvees are registered on the books of one of the other 425th teams, and even though the other guys aren’t using them they want them back: 2005, Rob Schultheis, chapter 14, in Waging Peace: A Special Operations Team’s Battle to Rebuild Iraq, New York: Gotham Books, page 167:
   • a ruin’d well, / Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Love’s Apparition and Evanishment”, in The Poetical Words of S. T. Coleridge, London: William Pickering, page 132:

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