snark

an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.

Brit-wit, in fact, could be seen as the precursor to the communicative style valorized on these beratement panels and on fan/rating communities, namely snark or snarkasm. Snark, a hybrid of “snide” and “remark," is a biting, casual verbal attack. Its subtle insult comprises a tone that acts as a weapon to cut its target down to size.

Snark will get you any way it can, fore and aft, and to hell with consistency. In a media society, snark is an easy way of seeming smart. […] Snark doesn't create a new image, a new idea. It's parasitic, referential, insinuating.

To express oneself in a snarky fashion.

Other would-be Bright Young People, Lytton Strachey snarked, seemed to have “just a few feathers where brains should be.”

Ah! That was "snark". You snark when your blood sugar is low. I know how to help you. Pizza. Humans seem to find calm in the consumption of food.

To snort.

The fictional creature of Lewis Carroll's poem, used allusively to refer to fruitless quest or search.

When the auctioneer had exhausted his vocabulary in describing the merits of an animal, his winding-up formula was "One times! two times! three times!" Then the hammer gave a tap, and he and our party would devote our energies to discovering the last bidder - a research which generally was as promising as the hunting of the snark.

Remy said Dad was hunting snarks; at the time, she'd thought it was a euphemism.

A graph in which every node has three branches, and the edges cannot be coloured in fewer than four colours without two edges of the same colour meeting at a point.

A fluke or unrepeatable result or detection in an experiment.

Cabrera's Valentine's Day monopole detection or some extremely energetic cosmic rays could be examples of snarks.