Eleven Ways to Say Snow

Hark back, if you will dear reader, to those glorious days spent in the Spartan one-room school house of our now-distant youth. Troll long enough, and you will no doubt stumble across a profound remembrance set in or around a 2nd grade Social Studies class. Yes, I am referring to that piece of ubiquitous jnana bestowed upon each of us so early in life: "Eskimos have eleven different words for snow." I recently checked back on the veracity of this claim and, after a bit of research, dug up the eleven words - or more accurately their "lexeme" roots - translated from the Inuit syllabary into our Roman characters. They are as follows:

quanuk - 'snowflake'

kaneq - 'frost'

kanevvluk - 'fine snow/rain particles'

natquik - 'drifting particles'

nevluk - 'clinging particles'

aniu - 'fallen snow on the ground'

muruaneq - 'soft, deep fallen snow on the ground' (skier's powder)

qetrar - 'crust on fallen snow'

qanisqineq - 'fallen snow floating on water'

qengaruk - 'snow bank'

navcaq - 'snow cornice, snow (formation) about to collapse'

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"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." - Henri Bergson