Eskimos and Snow

It is often said that eskimos have a large numbers of words for types of snow, like 60 or so. And almost as often somebody will claim that it is an unfounded falsehood. Somebody even wrote a book on that basis. But now some folks have actually done the logical thing and investigated it a bit. And maybe it isn't exactly 60, but it is at least 32. These are from the Inupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Webster and Zibell:

• apun: snow

• apingaut: first snowfall

• aput: spread-out snow

• kanik: frost

• kanigruak: frost on a living surface

• ayak: snow on clothes

• kannik: snowflake

• nutagak: powder snow

• aniu: packed snow

• aniuvak: snowbank

• natigvik: snowdrift

• kimaugruk: snowdrift that blocks something

• perksertok: drifting snow

• akelrorak: newly drifting snow

• mavsa: snowdrift overhead and about to fall

• kaiyuglak: rippled surface of snow

• pukak: sugar snow

• pokaktok: salt-like snow

• miulik: sleet

• massak: snow mixed with water

• auksalak: melting snow

• aniuk: snow for melting into water

• akillukkak: soft snow

• milik: very soft snow

• mitailak: soft snow covering an opening in an ice floe

• sillik: hard, crusty snow

• kiksrukak: glazed snow in a thaw

• mauya: snow that can be broken through

• katiksunik: light snow

• katiksugnik: light snow deep enough for walking

• apuuak: snow patch

• sisuuk: avalanche

There you go, 32. And, now that's what was found in a particular Inupiat to English dictionary. I can only guess that the guy who found it was an English-speaking person who searched a text file on "snow" and a few other things he could think of, like "sleet" and "frost". So I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were words and variations that weren't in the dictionary and words that weren't found because the English translation didn't mention "snow". Anyway, that was just one Eskimo dialect. Others get different, but similar sets of results. Around 30 root "lexemes" in another dialect. And those languages also seem to have a large number of possible inflections and conjugations and combinations based on the roots that could add up to hundreds of snow related words.