the.com/snitch
the rat who turns whispers into evidence and friends into witnesses.
means To snitch is to inform on someone, reporting their secrets or wrongdoing to an authority — or, as a noun, the person who does it.
from "Snitch" surfaces in 18th-century thieves' cant, where it first meant a fillip on the nose, then the nose itself — and a "snitch" became someone who, in the slang logic of the underworld, stuck their nose into others' business or turned their nose toward the law. The leap from "nose" to "informer" runs through the same instinct that gave us "to nose out" a secret. The exact bridge is murky, as criminal slang rarely leaves a paper trail, but the nose-to-narc journey is well attested.
- origin
- 1700s slang for nose, the organ that pokes in
- prison code
- stitches has rhymed with snitches since at least the 1800s
- quidditch
- the golden snitch ends matches with 150 instant points
- legal upside
- informants earn reduced sentences via cooperation deals
- animal libel
- rats rarely betray; they're loyal, social, and unfairly slandered
sammy gravano mafia turncoat — underboss who testified against john gotti in 1992, bringing down the gambino crime family
golden snitch harry potter — the magical ball in quidditch that seekers chase, worth 150 points