sand asp

English

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sand viper

Wikipedia

Noun

sand asp (plural sand asps)

1. The horned viper or sand viper (Vipera ammodytes).^[1]
   • 1834, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Love’s Apparition and Evanishment”, in The Poetical Words of S. T. Coleridge‎, London: William Pickering, page 132:

     a ruin’d well, / Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell

   • 1876, Walter Thornbury, “The Legend of St. Vitus”, in Historical and Legendary Ballads and Songs‎, London: Chatto and Windus, page 44:

     the Saint began / Upon his flute to breathe his magic tune, / Such as the serpent-charmers use to charm / The sand-asps forth,

   • 2005, Rob Schultheis, chapter 14, in Waging Peace: A Special Operations Team’s Battle to Rebuild Iraq‎, New York: Gotham Books, page 167:

     For several days they roll around in style, and then the inevitable snafu strikes like a sand asp: it turns out the new Humvees are registered on the books of one of the other 425th teams, and even though the other guys aren’t using them they want them back:

References

1. Philip L. Sclater, List of Vertebrated Animals Living in the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London, 1866, p. 192.