Language Log

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Several people have sent this in: "Scots 'have 421 words' for snow", BBC News 9/23/2015: Academics have officially logged 421 terms – including "snaw" (snow), "sneesl" (to begin to rain or snow) and "skelf" (a large snowflake). The study by the University of Glasgow is part of a project to compile the first Historical Thesaurus […]

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 […]

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."

NASA is reporting that the Mars lander has observed snow falling, though it vaporizes before it reaches the ground. NASA is silent about how many words the Martians have for snow.

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.  

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 […]

For the record: "Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages", The Conversation (4/10/25); rpt. in phys.org/news (4/13/25) Authors: Charles KempProfessor, School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne (PhD MIT)Ekaterina VylomovaLecturer, Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne (The University of Melbourne, […]

[Several days ago, I had prepared a post on this topic, but Mark scooped me with his "Mushroom language?" (1/9/24).  His coverage of the counterposed Adamatzky and Blatt, et al. papers is superior to mine, so I will just strip out that part of my post and leave the remaining observations with which I had […]

[This is a guest post by Scott de Brestian] I am an avid Language Log reader, and so am familiar with two ongoing series that your blog has – first, the posts debunking the “Eskimos (or people X) have unusually many words for snow” myth (which I believe drew me to your blog in the […]

Robert Booth, "'Ching, wap, ox': slang interpreters decipher texts for court evidence", The Guardian 3/29/2019: Do you know your “tum-tum” from your “ching” and your “corn” from your “gwop” (gun, knife, ammunition and money)? Neither do police and prosecutors, who have begun consulting a linguistics professor to help decipher urban slang and drill lyrics used […]

One of Matt Wuerker's 2017 political cartoons:

Earlier today, Victor quotes Jerry Packard quoting C.C. Cheng to the effect that "the human lexicon has a de facto storage limit of 8,000 lexical items" ("Lexical limits", 12/5/2015). Victor is appropriately skeptical, and asks  for "references to any studies that have been done on the limits to (or norms for) the human lexicon".  In […]