To go, conduct, or drag in a sinuous manner.
1829. It was so contrived that in the cold weather of winter, logs, sixteen feet in length, could be drawn, or, as it is technically phrased snaked into church and placed parallel to the mud-daubed wall, and a fire kindled along the whole length.—T. Flint, ‘George Mason,’ p. 21 (Boston). (Italics in the original.)
1844. I’ve snaked it about these woods for a week, lookin’ for a squire to hitch us, and wore out a pair of deer-skin breeches lookin’ for him.—Yale Lit. Mag., x. 167 (Feb.).
1848. We skinned [the cow] and snaked her out of the barn upon the snow.—Boston Daily Advertiser, March (Bartlett).
1854. Afore a hog knew what he was abaout, he was as bare as a punkin, a hook and tackle in his snout, and up they snaked him on to the next floor. I veow! they kept snakin an’ snakin ’em in an’ up through the scuttle, just in a continual stream.—N.Y. Spirit of the Times, n.d.
1856. They snaked it, from cover to cover, until, among the pine-groves of the highlands, they discovered the travelling-carriage and the parties whom it bore.—W. G. Simms, ‘Eutaw,’ p. 56 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)
1856. How he snaked, and moled, and cooned, going through all the degrees essential to a scout’s diploma, we need not narrate.—Id., p. 129.
1857. I ain’t comin’ back here to be snaked round like a beef critter.—J. G. Holland, ‘The Bay-Path,’ p. 155.
1862.
| The cusses an’ the promerses make one gret chain, an’ ef | |
| You snake one link out here, one there, how much on ’t ud be lef? | |
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd Series, No. 3. |
1868. At 12 years of age I could take a yoke of oxen into the forest, and this in dead of winter, cut down and cut up trees, and “snake” them to the farm.—Sol. Smith, ‘Autobiography,’ p. 11.
