Snark Attack

   "Snark" is now a verb.
   Coined by Lewis Carroll in his story about a creature with the features of both a snake and a shark, the noun soon became an adjective -- snarky -- and was applied to people and their remarks that were snide, sarcastic, or both.
   For many decades, it was used as an adjective, relegated as slang by most dictionaries, and popular in the UK. In recent years, "snarky" has become more widespread in the U.S., but was stilled regarded as slang.
   Inevitably, the word graduated from noun to adjective and now can be a verb, reaching firm approval when it appeared today in the New York Times in a story about a judicial nominee, Matthew Petersen, being questioned by Senate committee member John Kennedy. (Page A13 in the print edition, under the headline, "When Asked About Law / Judicial Nominee Stumbles.")
  According to the report, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse "snarked" that Petersen "couldn't answer a single one" of inquiries that were "basic questions of law."
   Whitehouse posted a video clip of the incident, which was picked up by TV news media and has gone viral on the internet.
   
   New words are coined and spread daily. Many enjoy a brief surge of popularity among small  groups, and perhaps become widespread slang until they eventually become so widely used that they appear in print in major publications and are picked up by compilers of dictionaries.
   Welcome to the lexicon, "snark," and thanks to Lewis Carroll, a prolific inventor of new words and phrases, as well as the New York Times, which brought "to snark" to maturity.