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Glite Dictionary
snakes and ladders

snakes and ladders

1 2.1
A board game where players roll dice and move pieces up ladders or down snakes
  • noun
  • /sneɪks ənd ˈlædərz/
  • UK
: serpientes y escaleras
  • Kids enjoy playing snakes and ladders because it combines luck and strategy.

Examples

  • The snakes and ladders board is beautiful!

    Blog text (19)

  • My passion is Snakes and Ladders.

    The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

  • No, we didn't play Snakes and Ladders.

    Hellboy (2019)

  • Well, you'd have to be to play Snakes and Ladders with yourself.

    The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

  • And Snakes and Ladders.

    The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

  • Snakes and Ladders. Yellow Bananas series. Michael Morpurgo. Ill. Anne Wilson. Crabtree. 978-0-7787-0952-7.

    Academic text (2007)

  • We gathered around the table to play snakes and ladders on Saturday night.

  • The snakes and ladders game features colorful illustrations that attract young players.

Surface Forms

snakes and ladders singular
snakes and ladders plural

Morphology

snake + and + ladder

The phrase literally names the salient components of the game — snakes and ladders — and an average B1 learner who knows 'snake', 'and' and 'ladder' can infer a game involving climbing ladders and sliding down snakes; this is a compositional, descriptive label rather than an idiomatic meaning. The construction is cross-linguistically understandable (many languages have an equivalent board game name), so the meaning is transparently derived from the constituents.

Etymology

Snakes and ladders comes from an old Indian game where ladders stood for 'good deeds' that help you climb toward 'heaven', and snakes stood for 'bad deeds' that make you fall back. So in the game, landing on a ladder moves you up and landing on a snake sends you down, which is why it is about sudden rises and falls.