snippet

plural snippets

1. A small part of something, such as a song or fabric; sample.

   From the snippet I heard of their rehearsal, they sound pretty good.

   3 more examples

   He cut his coats without waste; according to his embroidered cloth, they were very small ends and snippets that lay about upon the table […]

   1902, Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester

   On another occasion a "Schools" class, No. 30911 Dover, with a load of eight bogies on the same train was badly delayed by signals all the way, but made very determined attempts to pick up time whenever possible. This resulted in a sustained speed of 50 m.p.h. up Sole Street bank and several snippets in the "eighties".

   1959 April, P. Ransome-Wallis, “The Southern in Trouble on the Kent Coast”, in Trains Illustrated, London: Ian Allan Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 216

   Miss Honey smiled. It was extraordinary, she told herself, how this little snippet of a girl seemed suddenly to be taking charge of her problems, and with such authority, too.

   1988, Roald Dahl, Matilda

   Synonyms: excerpt, cutting, bit, chip, chunk, tranche, clip, crumb

2. computingA text file containing a relatively small amount of code, useless by itself, along with instructions for inserting that code into a larger codebase.

present singular third person snippets · participle present snippeting · nonstandard participle present rare snippetting · participle past snippeted · past snippeted · nonstandard participle past rare snippetted · nonstandard past rare snippetted

1. oftentransitivecomputingTo produce a snippet (small part) of; to excerpt.

   We snippeted the blog posts for display on the home page.

   Synonyms: excerpt

2. To make small cuts, to snip, particularly with scissors.

   All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippetted […]

   1902, Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester