four_words_for_snow epitome of incomprehensibility Oft-repeated fun fact: the Inuit language has X number of words for snow. Let X = more than one. What's this supposed to prove? That language is shaped by environment. People around snow a lot will make finer distinctions than people not around it much. I met this idea in a routine reading for History of Linguistics, where X = 4 instead of some outlandishly large number. Franz Boas from 1911 wrote that aput = snow on the ground qana = falling snow piqsirpoq = drifting snow qimuqsuq = snowdrift and this sounds credible. He also notes that there's a different word for a seal basking in the sun than a seal basking on ice, and I remember something like this from the novel Sanaaq, written by an Inuit women: the distinction was probably useful to hunters. Anyway, when I was a kid, the X in the Inuktitut-words-for-snow factoid was much greater. 40 words for snow! 100! 200! Someone (my dad?) theorized that people thought there were so many words because of the different inflections and compounds, but maybe someone just thought Boas' point would be more impressive with bigger numbers. English terms for snow? If we expand this to icy precipitations too...snow, flurries, hail, ice pellets, sleet... This year, it snowed three days in a row - the last three days of October. (On the 30th it crept to the ground in the night and remained until past noon.) 231101 ... e_o_i (The consecutive October snowing was done in Montreal, Quebec at least. Today did not continue the streak, so I haven't been able to invent four different words for the four snows because there are only three snows and that's how it goes.) 231101 ... e_o_i edit: seal basking in the sun vs. a seal FLOATING on a piece ice. I suppose a seal could bask in the sun while on ice, but the distinction is maybe that the basking seal is on land? not sure 231101 what's it to you? who go blather from