the.com/snip
The sound of commitment being outsourced to scissors.
means A small, quick cut made with scissors or shears — or the little clipped piece that falls away from it.
from Snip is imitative — a bit of sound-mimicry borrowed into English around the 1500s, likely from Dutch or Low German 'snippen,' meaning to cut quickly with small scissor-strokes. The word is basically onomatopoeia with a blade: it sounds like what it does, a cousin of 'snap' and 'snick' in that whole family of short, sharp cutting-and-breaking words.
- origin
- German snippen, mimicking the sound itself
- slang use
- means a bargain, or a vasectomy
- onomatopoeia
- one of few words that sounds like its action