death adder

Multiple Entries:
  death adder    adder  

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
death adder

▶noun a venomous Australian snake with a thin worm-like tail that it uses to lure prey. [Acanthophis antarcticus and related species.]

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
adder1

▶noun a small venomous snake which has a dark zigzag pattern on its back and bears live young. [Vipera berus.]

■ used in names of similar or related snakes, e.g. death adder, puff adder.

word history: Adder comes from the Old English word nædre, ‘serpent’, from a Germanic root: the n was lost in medieval times through a naddre being read as an addre. Other words formed by a similar process of wrong division include apron, originally a napron, and auger (a nauger). The process sometimes works the other way, resulting in n being added to the beginning of a word: a newt was originally an ewt, a nickname an eke-name, and an umpire a noumpere.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
adder2

▶noun Electronics a unit which adds together two input variables.