Snark
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The word snark has a number of uses:
- A Snark (Lewis Carroll) is a fictional animal, the quarry of a hunting party made up of some highly unlikely characters in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark
- A snark (graph theory) is a graph in which each vertex has three edges, but it is impossible to color the edges with only three colors so that edges of the same color don't meet at one vertex. A boojum is a planar snark. See Four-Color Theorem.
- The SM-62 Snark was an intercontinental nuclear cruise missile of the US Air Force that was operational in 1960 and 1961.
- In Marvel Comics, the Zn'rx, or "Snarks", are reptilian aliens who frequently menaced the alien Kymaelians and the child superheroes of Power Pack.
- A Snark (boat) was a discount variety of small sailboat.
- The Snark (yacht) was a boat built to Jack London's specifications on which he lived from 1906 to 1908.
- The Snark was a small two-man submarine in the movie Gray Lady Down.
- MV The Second Snark was built in 1938 as a shipyard tug and tender, and continues in use as a cruise boat and passenger ferry on the Firth of Clyde.
- Corporal Snark is also the name of a minor character in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22.
- In computer lingo, a "snark" is a system failure. On one system, when a user's process bombed, the operator would get the message "Help, Help, Snark in MTS!" More generally, any kind of unexplained or threatening event on a computer is called a snark, especially those pesky entries in log files that might indicate an attempted security violation. (Also see snivitz).
- Snark (speech) also refers to a style of speech/writing that could loosely be described as "snidely derisive"; hence, 'snarkish', 'snarky', 'to snark at somebody'. (According to The Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snark&r=f), snark is a contraction of "snide remark".)
- "Snark" is also the term for a webcomic review from the Websnark blog, websnark.com (http://www.websnark.com). A Websnark snark is not necessarily snide; it derives from the website's name, which in turn derives from snark (speech).
- "Snark" is also the name of a small, bug-like species of alien used as a weapon in the computer game Half-Life. They are thrown by the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, at any enemies within a medium distance. Despite their size (about the same girth as a large rat), snarks are capable of delivering a VERY nasty bite; three snarks set upon a clumsy opponent will spell his doom. They also explode after a certain period of time, or if they are shot at. This is equally dangerous, for their blood is toxic.