Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAlister
Word of the Day: Blizzard
The word blizzard, in the sense of a severe snowstorm, is an American word from the early 1800s. It’s assumed to be based on English dialect “blisser,” meaning a violent blow or crushing remark, a word that arose from the French blesser, to injure or wound. It was used colloquially in the American West in the sense of “violent blow,” but came to mean a well-aimed musket shot thanks to Davy Crockett’s glamorized autobiography in 1834. By the Civil War, which began in 1861, both sides were using the word to mean a blistering volley of musket or cannon shot.
It was first used in a newspaper in Iowa in 1870 to describe a snowstorm, probably to grab headlines, like current newspapers refer to large snowstorms as snowmageddon. Once everyone started talking about the “Great Blizzard,” its meaning was forever changed. Today the word is used for any large snowstorm, but technically refers to a snowstorm with sustained wind of 35 mph or greater with visibility of less than a quarter mile because of falling or blowing snow, expected to last three hours or more.
Although popular convention has it that the Intuit people have the greatest number of words for snow, they are actually similar to most countries where there’s snow in that that they have many ways to describe it, like falling, packed or slushy. It may actually be the Scots who have the greatest number of words for snow. A study to compile the first Historical Thesaurus of Scots by the University of Glasgow logged more than 400 words Scots use for snow. They include skelf (a large snowflake), feefle (to swirl), flindrikin (a slight snow shower), snaw-pouther (fine driving snow) and spitters (small drops or flakes of wind-driven rain or snow).
