HELPNOTE The usual past form is sneaked, but snuck is now very common in informal speech in AmE and some people use it in BrE too. However, many people consider it incorrect and it should not be used in formal writing.
1 [V+adv./prep.] to go somewhere secretly, trying to avoid being seen:
What are you doing sneaking around out there? * Did you sneak into my room while I was asleep?
2 to do sth or take sb/sth somewhere secretly, often without permission:
[VN] We sneaked a look at her private diary. * I was caught sneaking my kitten into the school. * At last we were able to sneak a moment alone together. * [VN, VNN] I managed to sneak a note to him. * I managed to sneak him a note.
3 [VN] (informal) to secretly take sth small or unimportant:
I sneaked a cake when they were out of the room.
4 [V] ~ (on sb) (to sb) (old-fashioned, BrE, disapproving) to tell an adult that another child has done sth wrong, especially in order to cause trouble
SYNSNITCH:
Did you sneak on me to the teacher?
PHRASALVERBS
sneak up (on sb/sth) to move towards sb very quietly so that they do not see or hear you until you reach them:
He sneaked up on his sister and shouted 'Boo!'.
noun (old-fashioned, BrE, disapproving) a person, especially a child, who tells sb about sth wrong that another person has done
SYNSNITCH
adjective [onlybeforenoun] done without any warning:
a sneak attack / raid
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for sneak is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is sneak a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, sneak is tagged as verb.
Does sneak appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — sneak appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
