snap mackerel (snapmak"erel)

The bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix. snapper1 (snap'er), n. [ Who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper -up of unconsidered trifles. Shak., W. T., iv. 3. 26. (b) A cracker-bonbon. Davies. And nasty French lucifer snappers with mottoes. Barham , In golds by Legends, II. 276. (c) The cracker on the end of a whip-lash; figuratively, a smart or caustic saying to wind up a speech or discourse. If I had not put that snapper on the end of my whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my antithesis provoked. O. W. Holmes, The Atlantic, LXVI. 667. (d) A fire-cracker or snapping-cracker. (e) A snapping beetle. (f) A snapping-turtle. (g) One of various fishes: (1) The snap-mackerel or bluefish, Pomatomus saltatrix. See cut under bluefish. (2) The rose-fish, redtish, or hemdurgan, Sebastes mar in us. See cut under Sebastes. [Nova Scotia.] (3) A sparoid fish of the subfamily Lutjaninæ. They are large, handsome fishes, of much economic value, as Lutja nus caxis or grise us, the gray, black, or Pensacola snapper; L. black ford i or vivanus, the red snapper; Rhomboplites Florida Red Snapper (Lutjanus black ford i). aurorubens, the bastard snapper or mangrove-snapper. All chiefly southward. The red snapper, of a nearly uniform rose-red color, is the most valuable of these; it is caught in large numbers off the coast of Florida, and taken to all the principal northern markets. The gray snapper is of a greenish-olive color, with brown spots on each scale and a narrow blue stripe on the cheek. There are also Malayan and Japanese snappers of this kind, called lutjang, the source of the technical name the In ornith.: these occur on the Atlantic coast States, (1) The green woodpecker, Gecinus virid is. See cut under popinjay. [Prov. Eng.] (2) One of various American flycatchers (not Muscicapidæ ) which snap at flies, often with an audible click of the beak; a fly snapper. See cut under fly snapper. (1) pl. Castanets. The instruments no other then snappers , gingles, and round bottom'd drums, born upon the back of one, and beaten upon by the followers. Sandys , Travailes, p. 133. Black snapper, a local name of a form of the cod, Gadus morrhua , living near the shore. snapper-back (snap'er-bak), n. center rusher. See rusher2. In foot - ball , a Neither the snapper - back nor his opponent can take the ball out with the hand until it touches a third man. Tribune Book of Sports , p. 126. snappers (snap'érz), n. Same as snap - jack . snapping-beetle (snap'ing-bē"tl), n. A snap, snapper, or snap-bug; a click-beetle; a skipjack; an elater: so called from the way they snap, as to both the noise and the movement. See cut under click - beetle .