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PlainSpell

snood

/snuːd/noun, verb

snood is a noun meaning “A band or ribbon for keeping the hair in place, including the hair-band formerly worn in Scotland and northern England by young unmarried women” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled S-N-O-O-D, and it appears about once in every 16 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of snood is snoods.

What does snood mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A band or ribbon for keeping the hair in place, including the hair-band formerly worn in Scotland and northern England by young unmarried women.

  2. 2

    A small hairnet or cap worn by women to keep their hair in place.

  3. 3

    The flap of erectile red skin on the beak of a male turkey.

  4. 4

    A short line of horsehair, gut, monofilament, etc., by which a fishhook is attached to a longer (and usually heavier) line; a snell.

  5. 5

    A piece of clothing to keep the neck warm; neckwarmer.

verb

  1. 1

    To keep the hair in place with a snood.

    Janet has kilted her green kirtle A little aboon her knee, And she has snooded her yellow hair

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce snood?

  • /snuːd/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-snood.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of snood

  • snoods plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • snod
  • sneed
  • snooding participle, present
  • snooded participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is snood?

Snood appears about once in every 16 million words in written English, the 119,826th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Snood in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
GermanHaarnetz, Haarband (band or ribbon for keeping the hair in place), Kehllappen (flap of skin on the beak of a turkey), Mundschnur (short line to attach a fishhook to a line)
Spanishredecilla, cintillo (band or ribbon for keeping the hair in place), moco de pavo (flap of skin on the beak of a turkey)
Frenchpendeloque (flap of skin on the beak of a turkey)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does snood come from?

From Middle English snod, from Old English snōd (“headdress, fillet, snood”), from Proto-West Germanic *snōdu, from Proto-Germanic *snōdō (“rope, string”), from Proto-Indo-European *snoh₁téh₂ (“yarn, thread”), from *sneh₁(i)- (“to twist, wind, weave, plait”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).