The 1955 Glossary of Arctic and Subarctic Terms is a collection of scientific and indigenous terminology that’s dated, but often poetic, which describes the features of an extremely cold landscape. Among those terms are diamond dust, also called snow mist is “the precipitation of fine ice crystals falling directly from the atmosphere with no cloud formation present.” Snow pellets are sometimes called tapioca snow, and a sugar iceberg is “an iceberg composed of porous glacier ice.” Nieve penitente, which is Spanish for “penitent snow,” refers to spikes or pinnacles of ice or granular snow left by the uneven melting of a snowbank or glacier. Nieve penitente is found in the high altitudes along the border of Chile and Argentina, and may be so named either because from a distance they look like penitents kneeling in the cold or they resemble the tall, pointed habits worn by certain religious orders in the Processions of Penance during Spanish Holy Week. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Lovely Names for Snow”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. And Grant, I must thank you so much for that book you gave me a couple of weeks ago.
You’re welcome.
Obviously, you know me too well because you gave me a 1955 glossary of Arctic and subarctic terms.
And it is fantastic.
Yeah, a glossary instead of a greeting card. That’s the thing for Martha Barnette.
It’s a glossary of scientific and indigenous terms, primarily for military personnel.
But, boy, so much of it is so poetic.
I mean, it has terms like sugar iceberg and tapioca snow and diamond dust.
Isn’t that gorgeous?
Yeah, diamond dust.
Oh, I love it.
What is that?
That is precipitation of fine ice crystals falling directly from the atmosphere with no cloud formation present.
Diamond dust.
Yes, isn’t that gorgeous?
And tapioca snow, as you can guess, is just kind of snow pellets that look like tapioca.
And a sugar iceberg is an iceberg composed of porous glacier ice.
But let me share with you my favorite term in the whole book.
It’s nieve penitente.
And that’s Spanish for penitent snow.
If that’s not something you could write a poem about, I don’t know.
I’m not sure how I would interpret that.
Penitent snow.
What could that mean?
Well, look it up on the internet because there are gorgeous photos of penitent snow.
I spent half an hour just looking at those.
Penitent snow refers to spikes or pinnacles of ice that are produced when a snowbank or a glacier melts in an uneven way.
And you see this especially in the high altitudes along the border of Chile and Argentina.
And it’s called nieve penitente, which means penitent snow in Spanish, because it recalls the image of all these penitent people, you know, repenting for their sins, kneeling across the landscape.
Or it might also come from the fact that certain religious orders during Spanish Holy Week, you know, march through the streets and they have these tall pointed habits.
You can see pictures of those too.
And I think it’s just such a gorgeous term, penitent snow.
Wow, and it’s so culturally important.
That’s why it’s opaque to me, because it’s not a part of my experience.
I haven’t seen the ice feature, and I don’t know that religious order.
So interesting.
Yes, and then once you do, it all becomes legible.
It reminds me of you and I have both spent some time in the desert here in Southern California, and at first it looks, you know, it just all kind of looks the same.
But over time, you start to see more and more features and recognize them, and it becomes more specific.
And you start to realize that there’s this near infinite variety of features out there.
I’m glad that you enjoyed this book, Martha.
Well, I am too.
So again, that’s the glossary of Arctic and subarctic terms.
It’s from 1955.
It’s dated in a lot of ways, but I still really enjoyed it.
And I think it’d be great for a poet just to page through and get some ideas.
We’d love it when you share the words of your hobbies and your jobs and your histories with us.
If there’s a glossary or a dictionary or some little word list that you’ve been saving, we’d love to learn more about it and share it with everyone else.
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