puff adder
nounEtymology Borrowed from Afrikaans or South African Dutch pofadder.
1
Any viper or adder in genus Bitis,
2
especially, a common puffadder (Bitis arietans), found in Southern Africa.
- In the pools, too, was a species of small alligator or enormous iguana, I do not know which, that fed, Billali told me, upon the waterfowl, also large quantities of a hideous black water-snake, of which the bite is very dangerous, though not, I gathered, so deadly as a cobra's or a puff adder's.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- Synonyms
- African adder
- Derived terms
- forest puff adder