A snowclone is a type of phrase that has a standard pattern in which some of the words can be freely replaced; for example, the pattern "X is the new Y" can become "Navy is the new black" or "Comedy is the new rock ’n’ roll" or "Staying in is the new going out", and so on
It's a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Eskimo words for snow.
It's a cliché and phrasal template that can be used and recognized in multiple variants. The term was coined as a neologism in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Eskimo words for snow.
The claim that Eskimo languages (specifically, Yupik and Inuit) have an unusually large number of words for "snow", first loosely attributed to the work of anthropologist Franz Boas, has become a cliché often used to support the controversial linguistic-relativity hypothesis: the idea that a language's structure (sound, grammar, vocabulary, etc.) shapes its speakers' view of the world. This "strong version" of the hypothesis is largely now discredited, though the basic notion that Eskimo languages have many more root words for "snow" than the English language is itself supported by a single 2010 study.
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