Now dial. [f. SNARL sb.1, with obscure first element; cf. the common north. dial. snock-snarl.] A tangle, knot, twist. Also fig.
1649. Lightfoot, Baltic Wasp’s Nest, Wks. I. 383. I could deduce such conclusions from these premises, that would make his opinion … run so on snicksnarles, that … he would find enough to do to unknot it again.
1675. Alsop, Anti-Sozzo, 277. It were tedious to instance … how they run their Enemies all on Heaps, and perplex their Discourses all into Snicksnarles.
1828. Carr, Craven Gloss., Snick-snarles, the complication of thread, yarn, &c., the state of its being entangled.
1862. Oldham Standard, 5 April, 2/4 (Cassell). Somebody must unravel the snick-snarls in the hank which somebody else had no more wit than to tangle.
1883. Gresley, Gloss. Coal-mining, 145. Kank.… A twist or snick-snarl in a rope.
