sand asp (plural sand asps)
- The horned viper or sand viper (Vipera ammodytes).[1]
1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Love’s Apparition and Evanishment”, in The Poetical Words of S. T. Coleridge[2], London: William Pickering, page 132:a ruin’d well, / Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell
1876, Walter Thornbury, “The Legend of St. Vitus”, in Historical and Legendary Ballads and Songs[3], London: Chatto and Windus, page 44:the Saint began / Upon his flute to breathe his magic tune, / Such as the serpent-charmers use to charm / The sand-asps forth,
2005, Rob Schultheis, chapter 14, in Waging Peace: A Special Operations Team’s Battle to Rebuild Iraq[4], New York: Gotham Books, page 167:For several days they roll around in style, and then the inevitable snafu strikes like a sand asp: it turns out the new Humvees are registered on the books of one of the other 425th teams, and even though the other guys aren’t using them they want them back:
- ^ Philip L. Sclater, List of Vertebrated Animals Living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London, 1866, p. 192.[1]
