A snippet is a small piece cut out of something bigger. Most often it is a piece of language: a snippet of news, a snippet of information, a snippet of conversation you heard while walking past. Two feelings come with it. It is short — a line or two, a few seconds, not a whole story. And it is incomplete — you got a corner of something, and the rest is missing, which is why snippets are often interesting but not enough. That is why the word sits so well with overhearing: snippets of conversation drifting from the next table. It also works for a short piece of music, film, or writing quoted from a longer work, and in the computer world a snippet is a small block of code you copy and reuse — a use your students will meet online very often. The pattern is almost always a snippet of X, or snippets in the plural when little pieces arrive one at a time. It is a friendly, everyday word, neither formal nor slang.