It's been a while since we've rounded up public appearances of the old "Eskimo words for snow" myth. Here are a few recent examples that have been sent in to Language Log Plaza. Item #1: The singer-songwriter Kate Bush will be releasing a new album on Nov. 21 with the title (sigh) 50 Words for […]
The granddaddy of all snowclones has often been expressed here at Language Log Plaza as a formula with variables: If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z. So it's pleasing to see this iteration of the ur-snowclone, from Jeff Potter's new book, Cooking for Geeks (p. 258): If Eskimos […]
Spotted by Jonathan Lighter on a recent trip to Iceland: "A big ad for 66°North fashions, prominently displayed at Keflavik Airport, telling passengers everywhere that There are over [a] 100 words for snow in Icelandic. Only one for what to wear."
David Marsh, in the regular language column at The Guardian, writes about the increasing frequency of -gate derivatives in recent journalism, and cites Language Log: All these gates are examples of a snowclone, a type of cliched phrase defined by the linguist Geoffrey Pullum as "a multi-use, customisable, instantly recognisable, timeworn, quoted or misquoted phrase […]
Stephen Colbert on Olympia Snowe (Colbert Report, Oct. 14): We are now one step closer to a nightmare future where everyone has health insurance. And I will tell you who I blame: Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, the only Republican who voted in favor of the bill. And folks, I am angrier than an Eskimo… because […]
We haven't posted on Eskimo words for snow in a while, but here's a sighting from the lolcat universe: This from Karen Baumer, who has a collection of linguistic lolcats on her Facebook page.
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Jonah Goldberg, "The Trouble with Nationalism", National Review 2/7/20 But I firmly believe that when we call the sacrifices of American patriots no different from the sacrifices of Spartans — ancient or modern — we are giving short shrift to the glory, majesty, and uniqueness of American patriotism and the American experiment. I’m reminded of […]
William Lashner, Fatal Flaw, 2009: What are we looking at when we are looking at love? Eskimos have like six billion different words for snow because they understand snow. Don’t ever try to snow an Eskimo. But for six billion different permutations of emotional attachment we have just one word. Why? Because we don’t have […]
Don't get me wrong: I am entirely positive about octopus porn. Graphically depicted sex with our multiply-tentacled cephalopod friends is cool as far as I'm concerned.
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EMH sent along a pointer to the 10/14/2010 Yourmometer strip: To forestall secondary ninja incursions, let me point out that some additional background on the whole Eskimo snow words issue can be found here. [I also need to point out that this cartoon ninja linguist, though perhaps unexpected and sometimes unwanted, is much less aggressive […]
According to Peter Bergen, "Winning the good war", Washington Monthly, July/August 2009: A corollary to the argument that Afghanistan is unconquerable is the argument that it is ungovernable—that the country has never been a functioning nation-state, and that its people, mired in a culture of violence not amenable to Western fixes, have no interest in […]
In "Linguistic relativity: snow and horses" (4/15/25), I summarized and assessed the following paper: Temuulen Khishigsuren et al, "A computational analysis of lexical elaboration across languages", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2417304122 My post was picked up by Cody Cottier, who was doing a critique of the Khishigsuren et al. article for […]