different between snowclone vs snow

English

Etymology

Blend of snow cone +? clone, after the popular idea that the Inuit have a large number of words for different types of snow; coined by Glen Whitman in response to Geoffrey Pullum on the blog Language Log.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?sn??.kl??n/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?sno?.klo?n/

Noun

snowclone (plural snowclones)

1. A type of cliché which uses an old idiom formulaically placed in a new context.

   "To fry or not to fry" is a snowclone of the famous quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To be or not to be".

   • 2005 Nov 5, auuV, "Some articles that I like. They are about language," alt.running.out.of.newsgroup.names, Usenet

     I stumbled upon the site the other day, when I was looking up the origins of the "Im not an X, but I play one on TV" snowclone.

   • 2005 December 3, David Rowan, "Trendsurfing: 'Snowclone' journalism" [1], The Times

     Suddenly snowclone hunters were documenting media usages suggesting that, in space, no one can hear you belch, bitch, blog, speak, squeak or suck.

   • 2006 Jun 20, Michael Erard, "Analyzing Eggcorns and Snowclones, and Challenging Strunk and White", in The New York Times, page F4

     Regular readers learned there first about snowclones, the basic building blocks of cliches, like "X is the new Y" or "you don't need a degree in A to do B."

   • 2006 Jul, Mark Peters, "Not Your Father's Cliché", in Columbia Journalism Review 45(2), page 14

     If so, you're being snowed under by snowclones — a category of fill-in-the-blank cliché identified by linguists.

   • 2006 Nov 18, unknown author, "Snowclone", in New Scientist 192(2578), page 80

     When you read phrases like these in a newspaper, you've stumbled across a particular type of cliché: the snowclone.

Related terms

• catchphrase
• cliché
• meme
• proverb

Translations

See also

• Appendix:English snowclones

References

• 2004 January 16, Geoffrey Pullum, “Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second”, Language Log

Further reading

• snowclone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English snow, snaw, from Old English sn?w (“snow”), from Proto-West Germanic *snaiw, from Proto-Germanic *snaiwaz (“snow”), from Proto-Indo-European *snóyg??os (“snow”), from the root *sneyg??-.

Cognate with Scots snaw (“snow”), West Frisian snie (“snow”), Dutch sneeuw (“snow”), German Schnee (“snow”), Danish sne (“snow”), Norwegian snø (“snow”), Swedish snö (“snow”), Icelandic snjór (“snow”), Latin nix (“snow”), Russian ???? (sneg), Ancient Greek ???? (nípha), dialectal Albanian nehë (“place where the snow melts”), Sanskrit ????? (snéha, “oil, grease”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) enPR: sn?, IPA^(key): /sn??/, [sn???]
• (US) enPR: sn?, IPA^(key): /sno?/, [sno??]
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

snow (countable and uncountable, plural snows)

1. (uncountable) The frozen, crystalline state of water that falls as precipitation.
   • 1928, A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner,

     The wind had dropped, and the snow, tired of rushing around in circles trying to catch itself up, now fluttered gently down until it found a place on which to rest.

2. (uncountable) Any similar frozen form of a gas or liquid.
   • 2008, Neal Asher, "Alien Archaeology"

     Clad in a coldsuit Jael trudged through a thin layer of CO₂ snow ...

3. (countable) A snowfall; a blanket of frozen, crystalline water.

   We have had several heavy snows this year.

4. (uncountable) A shade of the color white.

5. (uncountable) The moving pattern of random dots displayed on a television, etc., when no transmission signal is being received.

   Synonym: shash

6. (uncountable, slang) Cocaine.
   • 1930, Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

     Besides, if it wasn't poison, it might be 'snow' or something.

Synonyms

• (cocaine): blow

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

snow (third-person singular simple present snows, present participle snowing, simple past and past participle snowed)

1. (impersonal) To have snow fall from the sky.

   It is snowing.

   It started to snow.

2. (colloquial) To hoodwink someone, especially by presenting confusing information.
3. (poker) To bluff in draw poker by refusing to draw any cards.

Usage notes

• In older texts and still in dialects, the past tense snew and past participle snown may be encountered.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

References

• Brunson, Doyle (1978) Super/System: A course in power poker, B&G Publishing Company

Etymology 2

From Low German Snaue, or Dutch snaauw, from Low German Snau (“a snout, a beak”). See snout.

Noun

snow (plural snows)

1. (nautical) A square-rigged vessel, differing from a brig only in that she has a trysail mast close abaft the mainmast, on which a large trysail is hoisted.

Anagrams

• nows, owns, sow'n, sown, wons

Middle English

Alternative forms

• snaw, snowe, snawe, snow?, sno?, snogh, snou

Etymology

From Old English sn?w, from Proto-West Germanic *snaiw.

Pronunciation

• (Early ME, Northern ME) IPA^(key): /sn?u?/
• IPA^(key): /sn?u?/

Noun

snow (plural snowes)

1. snow (frozen water as precipitation, either while falling or once landed)
2. snow-white (a snowy white)
3. The temperature where snow appears.
4. A blanket of snow; a snowing.

Derived terms

• snewen
• snow whit
• snowen
• snowisshe
• snowy

Descendants

• English: snow
• Scots: snaw
• Yola: sneow, sneew, snowe

References

• “snou, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-06-14.

Spanish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /es?no/, [ez?no]

• IPA^(key): /es?nou/, [ez?nou?]

Noun

snow m (uncountable)

1. snowboarding

Derived terms