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Glite Dictionary
rough green snake

rough green snake

8.4
A thin bright green snake with rough scales that is harmless and lives in the southern and eastern United States
  • noun
  • /rʌf ɡrin sneɪk/
  • Specialized
translation icon : serpiente verde áspera
  • The rough green snake is often seen basking on tree branches in the sunlight.

Examples

  • The first snake I remember having as a pet was a rough green snake named Striker.

    Blog text (12)

  • While hiking in the woods, I spotted a rough green snake slithering among the leaves.

  • My friend has a rough green snake that she keeps in a terrarium at home.

Synonyms

Opheodrys aestivus
vsrough green snake
  • Specialized
9.9

A thin bright green snake that lives in trees and shrubs and is not poisonous

is the common everyday name used outside scientific contexts

Surface Forms

rough green snake singular
rough green snakes plural

Morphology

rough + green + snake

The meaning is a straightforward adjective-adjective-noun composition: a snake that is rough in texture and green in color, so the overall referent is directly derivable from 'rough' + 'green' + 'snake'. This kind of compositional description is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understood by a B1 learner who knows the constituent words (even if they don't recognize the specific species name).

Etymology

Rough green snake comes from a simple picture: the animal is bright green and its tiny scales feel rough instead of smooth. So the name points to this 'harmless' bright green snake today.