snicket (alley) (BrE)

[Mnemon]

Noun​

snicket (plural snickets)

1. (Northern England) A narrow passage or alley. [from 19th c.]

• 1968, Barry Hines, A Kestrel for a Knave: He cut down a snicket between two houses, out into the fields.
• 2018, Will Eaves, Murmur, Canongate 2018, p. 89: Our bikes are where we left them at the entrance to an overgrown snicket of yew, ivy and Hart's-tongue fern, through which a stream dribbles its way into the Ouse.

Hi.
Does the term ring any bells for you?

 

[Rover_KE]

I've never heard it used in Lancashire (a county adjoining Yorkshire).

We call it a ginnel here.

 

[5jj]

My wife, from Stoke, central England, uses 'snick'.

 

[emsr2d2]

We use "snicket" in Sussex (south-east England).

 

[5jj]

I can't remember if we had a special term in Hampshire, southern England, when I grew up there in the late 1940s/early 1950s. I can recall only 'alley(way'). There were 'vennels' in Durham, norht-east England when i was a student there in the mid 1960s

 

[SoothingDave]

This is a totally new thing to me. Definitely seems like something that needs a word to describe it, but we lack one in AmE.

 

[jutfrank]

We use "snicket" in Sussex (south-east England).

Really? Everyone I know in my part of Sussex uses "twitten".

 

[Mnemon]

Thank you all.

This is a totally new thing to me.

Yeah, two great nations divided by a common language.

Definitely seems like something that needs a word to describe it, but we lack one in AmE.

A list of synonyms for the term alley(way) has been provided by Wiktionary here.
Gangway is the term labeled Chicago-US, though don't know whether it's in current use or not. It states the term is part of the regional dialect those living in that part of the USA. Could you confirm its (in)validity? Have you ever been to Chicago before, if you don't mind me asking?

 

[probus]

The only snicket I've ever heard of is Lemony Snicket, author of the first last and only unauthorized autobiography.

 

[SoothingDave]

I have been in Chicago several times, but not outside the context of attending conventions.

I only know "gangway!" as a cry for people to get out of the way cause you are coming through.

 

[emsr2d2]

Really? Everyone I know in my part of Sussex uses "twitten".

We use that too!

 

[probus]

I only know "gangway!" as a cry for people to get out of the way cause you are coming through.

Gangway as an AmE synonym for alley or the BrE snicket is peculiar to Chicago and has its roots in a local bylaw.

Alleys and Gangways

chicagology.com

 

[Tdol]

I don't know it. (East Midlands)