'Snake' is PIE *sneg- (to crawl) — just like Latin 'serpens.' Both names mean 'the crawler.'
A long, limbless reptile with a scaly body, many species of which have a venomous bite.
From Old English 'snaca' (snake, serpent), from Proto-Germanic *snakō (snake, crawler), from PIE *sneg- (to crawl, to creep). The word is fundamentally a description of locomotion: a snake is 'the crawling thing.' The same PIE root produced Old Norse 'snákr' (snake) and Old High German 'snahhan' (to crawl). English thus has
English has two ancient words for this reptile — 'snake' and 'serpent' — and both are named for exactly the same thing: the crawling motion. 'Snake' comes from PIE *sneg- (to crawl), while 'serpent' comes from Latin 'serpēns' (the creeping one, from 'serpere,' to creep). Two different Indo-European roots, two different language branches, the same metaphor: the animal that moves