snowclone

English

WOTD – 27 December 2007

Etymology

Blend of snow cone +‎ clone, after the popular idea that the Inuit have a large number of words for different types of snow; coined by Glen Whitman in response to Geoffrey Pullum on the blog Language Log.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈsnəʊ.kləʊn/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈsnoʊ.kloʊn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (General Australian):

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Noun

snowclone (plural snowclones)

1. (grammar, linguistics) A type of cliché which uses an old idiom formulaically placed in a new context.

   "To fry or not to fry" is a snowclone of the famous quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "To be or not to be".

   • 2005 November 5, auuV, “Some articles that I like. They are about language,”, in alt.running.out.of.newsgroup.names (Usenet):

     I stumbled upon the site the other day, when I was looking up the origins of the "Im not an X, but I play one on TV" snowclone.

   • 2005 December 3, David Rowan, “"Snowclone" journalism”, Trendsurfing, in The Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 6 September 2006:

     Suddenly snowclone hunters were documenting media usages suggesting that, in space, no one can hear you belch, bitch, blog, speak, squeak or suck.

   • 2006 June 20, Michael Erard, “Analyzing Eggcorns and Snowclones, and Challenging Strunk and White”, in The New York Times, page F4:

     Regular readers learned there first about snowclones, the basic building blocks of cliches, like "X is the new Y" or "you don't need a degree in A to do B."

   • 2006 July, Mark Peters, “Not Your Father's Cliché”, in Columbia Journalism Review, volume 45, number 2, page 14:

     If so, you're being snowed under by snowclones — a category of fill-in-the-blank cliché identified by linguists.

   • 2006 November 18, anonymous author, “Snowclone”, in New Scientist, volume 192, number 2578, →DOI, page 80:

     When you read phrases like these in a newspaper, you've stumbled across a particular type of cliché: the snowclone.

   • 2024 August [2023 April 14], Journal of Linguistics, volume 60, number 3, →DOI, page 599:

     The concept of ‘snowclones’ has gained interest in recent research on linguistic creativity and in studies of extravagance and expressiveness in language. However, no clear criteria for identifying snowclones have yet been established[.]

Related terms

• catchphrase
• cliché
• meme
• proverb

Translations

a type of cliché

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 雪克隆 (xuěkèlóng)

• Dutch: sneeuwkloon
• Finnish: kulunut ilmaus
• French: snowclone (fr)
• German: sprachline Schablone f
• Japanese: もじり (ja) (mojiri), スノークローン (sunōkurōn)
• Russian: фра́за-клише́ f (fráza-klišé)
• Swedish: snöklon

Verb

snowclone (third-person singular simple present snowclones, present participle snowcloning, simple past and past participle snowcloned)

1. (intransitive) To use a snowclone in speech or writing.
   • 2006 November 15, “The word: Snowclone”, in New Scientist‎^[2], number 2578:

     Many journalists are guilty of serial snowcloning, but snowclones aren't always a symptom of laziness – they can be a cultural in-joke.

See also

• Appendix:English snowclones

References

• Geoffrey Pullum (2004 January 16) “Snowclones: lexicographical dating to the second”, in Language Log

Further reading

• snowclone on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• clown nose