50 TYPES OF SNOW

Some people melt over white landscapes, others less so. However, there are people for whom snow is such an inescapable phenomenon and affects every aspect of life that terms for it make up a sizable part of a language's vocabulary.
The inhabitants of the north of the globe, such as the Sami in Scandinavia or the Inuit in Alaska, have about 50 such words. Finnish, on the other hand, is able to describe snow and ice in nearly 40 ways, including separate terms for e.g. snow falling on the surface of the water - hyhmä, a thin layer of fresh snow on ice - iljanne, or ice covered with frost - tökkö.

SPIRITS AND SHEEP

However, it turned out that a completely different nation spoke the language containing the greatest number of words related to snow, cold and inclement weather (which apparently was and still is a frequently discussed topic). Researchers at the University of Glasgow are working on a project to compile a thesaurus of all Scottish words used throughout history. They have tracked down more than 400 quirky, lesser-known ways of describing winter weather and its accompanying circumstances (these can be found at scotsthesaurus.org). Such as, for example, flukra - large snowflakes, spitters - small snowflakes, snaw-breaker - i.e. a sheep that paves a path in the high snow for the rest of the flock, snaw-ghast - i.e. a snowdrift that looks like a ghost,
and finally snaw-smoor - being smothered by snow....

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