(ădˈər)
noun- See viper.
- Any of several nonvenomous snakes, such as the milk snake of North America, popularly believed to be harmful.
Word History: The biblical injunction to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves looks somewhat alien in the Middle English guise “Loke ye be prudent as neddris and symple as dowves.”
Neddris, which is perhaps the strangest-looking word in this Middle English passage, would be
adders in Modern English, with a different meaning and form.
Adder, an example of specialization in meaning, no longer refers to just any serpent or snake, as it once did, but now denotes only specific kinds of snakes.
Adder also illustrates a process known as false splitting, or juncture loss: the word came from Old English
nǣdre and kept its
n into the Middle English period, but later during that stage of the language people started analyzing the phrase
a naddre as
an addre—the false splitting that has given us
adder.
