The garden creature known in France as “escargot” is a snail.
“Escargot” is the ordinary French word for a snail, especially the land snails traditionally prepared as food. In English, the word is often used more narrowly for the culinary dish of cooked snails, but in French it refers to the animal itself as well. The plural is commonly written “escargots.”
Snails are soft-bodied gastropod mollusks that usually carry a coiled shell. They move using a muscular foot and produce mucus, which helps them glide over surfaces and protects their bodies. Garden snails are generally active in damp conditions and may feed on leaves, stems and other plant material.
A nearby language mix-up is “slug”: slugs are also gastropods, but they lack the prominent external shell associated with a snail. Another common misunderstanding is that “escargot” names only a particular French species. The word is broader than that, although French cuisine often uses edible land snails such as Helix pomatia and Cornu aspersum.