sand asp

plural sand asps

1. The horned viper or sand viper (Vipera ammodytes).

   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

   2 more examples

   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