snowflake
(ˈsnəʊfleɪk)
Also snow-flake.
[f. snow n.1 + flake n.2]
1. One of the small masses in which snow commonly falls.
| 1734 Cupid & Psyche 28 Soft as the cygnet's down his wings, And as the falling snowflake fair. 1822 Shelley ‘We meet not as we parted’ ii, That moment is gone for ever,..Like a snowflake upon the river. 1847 Prescott Peru iii. ii. (1850) II. 39 A white cloud of pavilions was seen covering the ground as thick as snow-flakes. 1878 Huxley Physiogr. 63 The largest snow-flakes fall when the temperature is near the freezing point. |
2. The snow-bunting. (Cf. snow-fleck.)
| 1770 Pennant Brit. Zool. IV. 17 Snow Flake. These birds appear in hard weather on the Cheviot Hills, and in the Highlands of Scotland, in amazing flocks. 1793 Statist. Acc. Scot. VII. 547 The snowflake, the rail or corncrake. 1837 Dunn Ornith. Orkn. & Shetl. 79 The Snowflake appears regularly in both countries. 1845 Zoologist III. 822 In hard winters snowflakes come from the North by thousands. 1872 Coues N. Amer. Birds 133 Snow Bunting. Snowflake. In breeding plumage, pure white, the back, wings and tail variegated with black. |
3. One or other variety of Leucojum.
| 1798 Curtis Fl. Londinensis II. pl. 72 As it differs very essentially in its fructification from the Galanthus we have thought it necessary to give it the new English name of Snowflake. 1806 J. Galpine Brit. Bot. 168 Leucojum æstivum, summer snow-flake. 1866 Treas. Bot. 1067/2 Spring Snowflake, Erinosma. 1882 Garden 28 Jan. 56/3 The Snowflake..is in full bloom, but owing to want of sun, has not expanded its flowers. 1899 Gardening Illustr. 27 May 167/1 In the earliest spring..the Spring Snowflake (L. vernum) is flowering in southern gardens... Later on comes the taller-growing Summer Snowflake (L. æstivum). |
4. (See quot.) Also attrib.
| 1882 Caulfeild & Saward Dict. Needlew. 452/2 Snow⁓flake, a term employed to denote a particular method of weaving woollen cloths, by which process small knots are thrown upon the face. 1890 Daily News 8 Jan. 1/6 A Large Lot..Snowflake Costumes, all Pure Wool. |
5. A name for a variety of potato.
| 1882 Daily News 9 Mar. 2 Potatoes,..foreign Snow-flakes. |
6. = hair-line crack s.v. hair-line 7. U.S.
| 1919 Bull. Amer. Inst. Mining Engineers Feb. 183 The appearance of ‘snow-flakes’ is unmistakable... The white silvery area, which always has the appearance of being of a very coarsely crystalline structure, in the specimen stands out in bold contrast to the darker background, and readily justifies the use of the term ‘snow-flakes’. 1925 [see hair crack s.v. hair n. 10]. 1942 [see fish-eye s.v. fish n.1 7]. |
7. attrib., as snowflake curve Math., a mathematically conceived curve (see quot. 1975) whose sixfold symmetry is reminiscent of that of a snowflake, of interest because its infinite length bounds a finite area.
| 1956 W. G. Walter Further Outlook iii. iv. 100 Jim Bursley had explained the snowflake curve to me and we had discussed the projection of such a curve into three dimensions. 1975 Sci. Amer. Nov. 144/2 Take the analyst's ‘snowflake’ curve.., which is made in an elementary way from an equilateral triangle of unit side by replacing the middle third of each side with a ‘cape’, itself the two jutting equal sides of a triangle a third as large as the original, and so on, repeating indefinitely. 1978 Ibid. Apr. 21/2 Among the fractals that exhibit strong regularity the best-known are the Peano curves that completely fill the finite region and the beautiful snowflake curve discovered by the Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch in 1904. |