English · Idiom Candidate

cock a snook

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

To show contempt or defiance

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Thể hiện khinh thường hoặc thách thức

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: make a scornful facial expression

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

who cocked a snook at Phyllis and Simone

A small firm on the brink of disaster two years ago cocking a snook at the recession by doubling its workforce and turning out garden tractors in the face of high demand … today saw number 5,000 roll off the line.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “cock a snook” mean?

To show contempt or defiance Literally: make a scornful facial expression

Is “cock a snook” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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