19 Old Cold Weather Words to Get You Through Winter

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.

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.

Crule can mean “to shiver with cold”—or “to crouch by a fire to warm up.”

Meggle is an old Scots word meaning “to trudge laboriously through mud or snow.”

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.

They’re the lines of snow or ice left at the sides of roads after the rest of the snow has melted.

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.”

An old Lancashire dialect word for thick, warm, insulating clothes. (In other words, you might “moble your mufflements.”)

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.

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.)

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.

An 18th-century expression for any weather condition in which snow lies on the ground.

Spangle, flauchten, and snow-blossom are all old words for snowflakes …

… while a single flake of snow large enough to stick to your clothes is known as a clart.

An old English dialect nickname for a slip or fall on ice.

Rone (or ronnie) is an old Scots word for a sheet or patch of ice that children use to slide on.

When the wind blows the snow off or away from something, it’s known as pundering.

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.

A 17th-century word for the water released by melting snow.

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.