You might have heard the Scots have over 400 words for snow (while it’s a myth that the Inuit have 100). We have just 10 splendid snow words here, but we love them all the same and hope you do too.

alpenglow

“The sun was sliding toward the horizon, throwing beautiful but alarming alpenglow on the mountains and valleys below.”

Michael Y. Ybarra, “Summit Meetings,” The Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2011

One of our favorite unusual nature words, alpenglow refers to that “rosy glow that suffuses snow-covered mountain peaks at dawn or dusk on a clear day.”

The word is borrowed from German, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and has been in use in English since at least the 1860s. Alpen of course comes from the name of a certain mountain range.

firn

“Before they could get to this a deep bed of old snow — ‘firn’ Melchior called it — a great sheet, like some large white field, had to be passed.”

George Manville Fenn, The Crystal Hunters: A Boy’s Adventures in the Higher Alps, 1891

Firn, also known as “old snow,” is granular snow “that has passed through one summer melt season but is not yet glacial ice.” The word translates from German as “of last year,” and ultimately comes from the Old High German firni, “old.”

graupel

“Graupel…is precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake.”

QMI Agency, “Graupel, not hail, falls on southern Ontario,” Ifpress, October 5, 2014

Another snow word of German origin, graupel is a diminutive of Graupe, German for “hulled grain.” Graupe is probably of Slavic origin and is related to the Russian krupa, “groats.” What the heck are groats? Crushed grain, especially oats.

jokul

“In the far distance rose several jokuls or glaciers, seeming to look proudly down upon the mountains, as though they asked, ‘Why would ye draw men’s eyes upon you, where we glisten in our silver sheen?’”

Ida Pfeiffer, Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian North, 1853

Jokul is an Icelandic word that refers to a mountain always covered in snow and ice. The OED says the word comes from the Icelandic jökull, “icicle.” The English icicle is related.

onding

“It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, ‘onding on snaw,’ canopied all; thence flakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting.”

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, 1869

The Scots gifted us with onding, a heavy and continuous rain or snow. Onding also refers to breathing or smelling as well as a figurative onslaught or noisy outburst.

poudre

“A ‘poudre’ day, with its steely air and fatal frost, was an ill thing in the world; but these entangling blasts, these wild curtains of snow, were desolating even unto death.”

Gilbert Parker, Pierre and His People, 1892

The powdery poudre refers to dust, gunpowder, and also powdery snow. The OED says the word is Canadian but now rare, and originally came from the French Canadian poudre, “powder.”

A poudre day is a “day on which fine, powdery snow falls,” or “a bitterly cold day.” Poudré, another rare term, refers to someone who wears their hair or wig powdered.

purga

“This, however, is not always practicable; should the storm, or, as it is called here, ‘purga,’ overtake him in the ravine of a mountain, such an immense quantity of snow becomes heaped upon him, that he has no power to extricate himself from his tomb.”

Otto von Kotzebue, A New Voyage Round the World, 1830

A purga refers to a violent blizzard of fine snow that might occur in “the eastern Asiatic tundra, northern and eastern Russia, and Siberia,” says the OED. While Russian in origin (obviously), the word purga might come from the Finnish purku, “snowstorm.”

quinzhee

“John is all for sleeping in the quinzhee, but having seen how thin Regent’s sleeping bags are, I exert what is left of my parental authority and take up our host’s suggestion that we use a nearby tent which he has equipped with a log-burning stove.”

Adrian Mourby, “Are you the right stuff for the white stuff?” The Independent, January 23, 2010

In addition to being an amazing Scrabble word, a quinzhee is a shelter made from a hollowed out pile of snow. The word comes from Slavey, which is part of the Athabaskan family of languages and spoken by the Slavey First Nations people in Canada. Quinzhee is a corruption of the Slavey kóézhii, “in the shelter.”

sastruga

“As the sledge strikes each sastruga, it skids northwards along it to the discomfort of the wheelers and the disgust of the leader.”

Sir Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australaisan Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914

A sastruga is “a long wavelike ridge of snow, formed by the wind and found on the polar plains.” The word comes from the Russian dialectal zastruga, where za means “beyond” and struga means (creepily) a “deep place into which one may fall.”

sitzmark

“Back then, grooming happened sometimes, on some trails, and on a flat-light day, an uncovered sitzmark, particularly an old one, could slam a guy into the ground in a heartbeat if hit just right.”

“Tony Vagneur: Saddle Sore,” The Aspen Times, December 5, 2009

Sitzmark is a skiing term that refers to a depression made in snow by someone who has fallen on their sitz-parts. Sitzmark is German in origin. Another sitz- word is sitz bath, a chair-like bathtub in which one bathes in a seated position.

Happy Origami Day! Every November 11, origamists around the world celebrate their love for the art of folding paper by, well, folding paper. Whether you’re a beginner who can barely make a paper airplane or an origami master who can create a life-sized elephant from a single sheet of paper, we hope you’ll enjoy this selection of some of our favorite origami words.

kami

Most origami starts with paper (unless of course you’re performing fabrigami). A basic inexpensive kind is kami, which translates from Japanese as “paper.” The –gami of origami is an alteration of kami. Ori, as you might have guessed, means “fold.”

Washi, which translates as “Japanese paper,” is a tough paper used in origami as well as other Japanese arts such as shodo or calligraphy. Elephant hide is a kind of paper that’s made in Germany.

blintz

Most origami designs start with a base, and there are lots of different kinds. The diamond, the fish, the dog, the frog. The water balloon, the bird, and the stretched bird.

The blintz is the base that resembles a pancake. To make a blintz base, all four corners of the paper are folded toward the center, and as a result rather resembles the blintz pancake. The word blintz is Yiddish in origin and comes from the Russian blinyets,  a diminutive of blin, “pancake.” Blini is another name for such a pancake.

fudge factor

The fudge factor is “a small gap deliberately left when folding to a crease…to make allowance for the thickness of the paper.”

Fudge has meant “to fit together or adjust in a clumsy, makeshift, or dishonest manner” since the 17th century, says the Oxford English Dictionary, and may be an ironic alteration of fadge, to suit or fit.

minor miracle

The minor miracle is a type of fold in which flaps are pushed to either side, and as a result the front and back of the design are hidden while the sides become the front and back, thus, we’re assuming, performing a minor miracle.

Yakko-san

The Yakko-san might be one of the oldest designs in origami. According to Natural History Magazine, the Yakko was a kind of servant or guard who accompanied a daimio, or feudal lord, on excursions, ensuring ahead of time that “the people were properly prepared to greet the lord as he passed by.” The Yakko also seems to be a traditional design for Japanese kites.

pajarita

Pajarita, Spanish for “little bird,” is a popular origami design in Spain. The word is a diminutive of pajaro, “bird,”and also refers to a bow tie.

kusudama

These beautiful flower balls are a kind of “modular origami,” that is, origami made by connecting various individual pieces. The word translates from Japanese as “medicine ball” since in the past they were primarily used to hold incense.

In case you were wondering, the American medicine ball, a heavy leather ball used for exercise, is so-called because its inventor equated exercise and physical fitness with medication.

Kan-no-mado

Due to a misreading of characters, the 19th-century Japanese origami instruction book, Kayaragusa, came to be referred to in the West as Kan-no-mado, which means “window on winter” or “window on the coldest season.” The book is known for including instructions on how to fold the notoriously difficult dragonfly.

An instruction book that predates Kan-no-mado is Hiden Senbazuru Orikata, or The Secret to Folding One Thousand Cranes, which purports to teach the folding of a thousand cranes from one sheet of paper. However, these seem to be merely pre-cut sheets connected after folding.

Tanteidan

There are no lack of origami societies with interesting names. There’s BOGS, the British Origami Gourmet Society, which apparently practices paper-folding during meals, and Poppadom, which stands for People Out Practising Paperfolding And Dining On Masala, and is part of BOGS.

Our favorite however is the name of Japan’s origami society: Tanteidan, which translates as “detectives,” named for, we’re guessing, their practice of unfolding the mysteries of complex origami designs.

Thomas Crapper, born on this day in 1836, is often credited with the invention of  the flush toilet. However, according to Nick Valéry at More Intelligent Life, that honor officially belongs to Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker “who was granted the first patent for a flush toilet in 1775,” more than 60 years before Crapper was born.

While, as Snopes says, Crapper “didn’t have much to do” with the development of flush toilets (and the nickname crapper may come from his name emblazoned on his plumbing products, or it may simply come from the word crap), he certainly popularized them, which is a good enough excuse for us to explore a brief history of toilet language.

Privy is a very old word for what we’d call the bathroom, with it earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from 1225. The word privy comes from the Old French privé, “intimate friendly; a private place.”

No matter how friendly, privies were often outside, and so chamber pots were used instead. A chamber pot was sometimes referred to as a potty, which we now use to refer to a child’s “training” toilet or as a childish way of saying you gotta go.

By 1579, we had gained the euphemism little house, which referred to “a room or building used as a toilet,” says the OED, especially “one without plumbing or situated outside.” Outhouse, mainly used in American English, is from about 1819.

By the early 18th-century, sailors were using head to refer to the latrine, which was located in the bow, or head, of the ship. John came later, possibly around 1735, when in a Harvard University publication, the men’s room is referred to as cuzjohn, short for “cousin john.”

Why cousin? Perhaps because it’s a term of familiarity and intimacy. Why john? There’s some speculation that john comes from Sir John Harington, who designed a flush toilet for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth, although the Online Etymology Dictionary says john is simply an alteration of another toilet term, jakes. Why jakes? The OED suggests (unsatisfyingly) that jakes comes from the proper name.

Water closet, or W.C., is from 1736 while earth closet, a lavatory in which dirt or earth used to cover excrement, is from 1863. Slang for earth closet is dunny, which might come from the Australian convict cant term, dunnekin, or cesspit.

Some lavatory lexicon originated with different meanings, such as, well, lavatory. Originating in the 14th century, the word first meant “a vessel for washing,” says the OED. By 1656, it referred to a place for washing, and finally by the 20th century, the meaning we use today.

The bathroom began in 1780 as a place for bathing and became a polite way to refer to the lavatory in early 20th-century America, which apparently “confused British travelers,” so says the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Ladies’ room (1825) began as a shortening of ladies’ cloakroom while restroom (1856), says the OED, was a place for “rest and relaxation,” especially in a “public building or workplace.” It’s unclear when these terms came to mean lavatory although we’d venture a guess it was the early half the 20th century.

Women’s room is from 1918 while men’s room is slightly later, from 1929. The euphemisms little boys’ room and little girls’ room are from the 1930s. The OED’s earliest citation for little girls’ room is from John O’Hara’s novel, Butterfield 8:

The women’s toilet (as distinguished from the ladies’ room in a speakeasy, the johnny at school, the little girls’ room at a party in an apartment, and the wash-my-hands on a train) was clean enough.

There are a couple of theories about the origins of the British English loo, which is from about 1922. One is that it comes from a French term picked up by British soldiers during World War I, lieux d’aisances, which translates as “place of ease.” Another says it’s a pun on Waterloo, which is “based on water closet.” (For even more on loo, check out this great post from Anatoly Liberman.)

Throne arose around the same time as loo. The OED’s earliest citation of throne meaning toilet is from James Joyce’s Ulysses: “With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.”

The dainty U.S. moniker powder room came about in the late 1920s. While it might seem logical that this sense would originate from the earlier British English meaning of a room where one would have one’s wigs powdered, a gap of 139 years and the Atlantic Ocean makes a direct connection seem doubtful.

Honeypot is 1940s military slang for a makeshift toilet. Another honey word for this not-so-sweet business is honey bucket, North American slang used especially in Canada and Alaska. Also used in Alaska is nushnik, which comes from the Russian nužnik, “latrine, toilet.”

Another U.S. regional term is biffy, which the American Heritage says is from the Upper Midwest but also, at least according to some of our pals on Twitter, used in parts of Ontario, Canada. Biffy might be an alteration of privy, or else, as word taster James Harbeck says, it could come from bivouac, a temporary encampment, by way of bivvy.

Netty, which is from North East England, might be short for the Italian gabbinetti, toilets, or, more likely, an alteration of “necessary.” A necessarium once referred to a privy in a monastery and is now is humorous way to refer to the toilet. Commode comes from the French word for “convenient,” while the far less elegant can might be short for piss-can.

Thunderbox, a portable commode, is presumably named for the sounds that might emanate from there. Khazi might come from the Italian casa, “house,” by way of the Cockney carsey or karzy. Cludgie, also kludgie, is Scots and might be a blend of closet and lodge. Finally, kybo, a Scouting term for an outhouse, is an acronym that stands for either Keep Your Bowels Open or Keep Your Bowels Operating.

Have any other lavatory language to share? Add them to this list!