There are only so many ways to say “it’s cold outside,” which is why it’s time to supplement your vocabulary with these vintage words and phrases related to winter. They may technically be old, but to you, they’ll feel as new as a layer of freshly fallen snow.
1. Ice-Legs
If sea-legs are a person’s ability to walk safely around a ship at sea, then ice-legs are the wintertime equivalent: It’s the ability to walk or skate on ice without falling over.
2. Crule
Crule can mean “to shiver with cold”—or “to crouch by a fire to warm up.”
3. Meggle
Meggle is an old Scots word meaning “to trudge laboriously through mud or snow.”
4. Aquabob
An 18th-century word for an icicle, which can also be called called “ice-shoggles,” “ice-candles,” or “ice-shackles.” A drop of water from an icicle is an icelet or a meldrop.
5. Snow-Bones
They’re the lines of snow or ice left at the sides of roads after the rest of the snow has melted.
6. Moble
Moble means “to wrap up the head with a hood.” More loosely, it’s used to mean “to wear layers of clothes to keep warm.”
7. Mufflements
An old Lancashire dialect word for thick, warm, insulating clothes. (In other words, you might “moble your mufflements.”)
8. Hapwarm
Hap is an old Yorkshire word for a heavy fall of snow, and likewise, hapwarm is an 18th-century dialect word for a heavy, all-covering item of clothing, worn to keep in the heat and keep out the cold.
9. Hogamadog
When you roll a snowball through a field of snow and it slowly gets bigger and bigger? That’s a hogamadog. (A regular old snowball can also be a winter apple.)
10. Moorkavie
Probably derived from an old Norse word, kave, meaning “a heavy snowfall or shower of rain,” moorkavie is a Scots dialect word for a blinding snowstorm. The moor part is thought to be an old word for a crowd or swarm.
11. Laying-Weather
An 18th-century expression for any weather condition in which snow lies on the ground.
12. Snow-Blossom
Spangle, flauchten, and snow-blossom are all old words for snowflakes …
13. Clart
… while a single flake of snow large enough to stick to your clothes is known as a clart.
14. Peck-of-Apples
An old English dialect nickname for a slip or fall on ice.
15. Rone
Rone (or ronnie) is an old Scots word for a sheet or patch of ice that children use to slide on.
16. Punder
When the wind blows the snow off or away from something, it’s known as pundering.
17. Ice-Bolt
In addition to being another name for an avalanche, the word ice-bolt was coined in the late 1700s for a sudden sharp feeling of the cold.
18. Snow-Broth
A 17th-century word for the water released by melting snow.
19. Shurl
When all the snow slides off a roof after it begins to thaw, that’s known as a shurl.
A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.
This article was originally published on www.mentalfloss.com as 19 Old Cold Weather Words to Get You Through Winter.
