Cosmos
Cosmos is a quarterly science magazine. We aim to inspire curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’ and make the world of science accessible to everyone.
By Cosmos
Travelling to the ends of the Earth is an extreme experience thanks to the environment… and the language. Bernadette Hince has crafted Cold Words: A Polar Dictionary to capture this unique vocabulary.
Cold Words took 35 years to write and defines about 3,000 words or phrases, many of them for the first time. The definitions are supported by 12,000 quotations taken from everything from explorers’ diaries to scientific papers to social media.
Lovers of the written word will enjoy skimming the pages, developing their polar vocabulary with new words, and reinforcing known words with curious examples.
The words themselves reflect the harsh, cold polar environment. In many instances they capture scientific phenomena, putting language to observations. There are about 300 words in the dictionary just for snow and ice.
Cold Words is currently only available for pre-order, with the dictionary due for release April 2025.
Check out 3 of our favourite words from the dictionary below.
Antarcticana
Antarctic
An item or items characteristic of or relating to Antarctica.
The menu was, naturally, a conventionally ingenious amalgam of French phrases and Antarcticana. Beer, and sometimes wine, flowed unexceptionably as we moved away from the ‘Potage à la Mount Erebus’.
1963 D McKenzie Opposite poles
Below are some collectors of Antarcticana. (A few are even bi-polar and collect Arcticana, too.)
27 Nov 2021 Antarctic Circle online
penguiny
Of or relating to a penguin; having attributes that a penguin should have.
[Commonwealth Bay] For our Christmas dinner we had lentil soup, fried penguin (which unfortunately tasted rather penguiny), a plum pudding.
25 Dec 1912 J Hunter Rise and shine (2011)
The Adélie is the most “penguiny” of the penguins, the stereotype that most people have in mind when they think of these appealing birds.
1979 RT Peterson Penguins
Penguins doing penguiny things.
25 Oct 2012 Youtube online
sastrugi
Arctic, Antarctic
[Russian zastrúga]
Parallel ridges of hard raised snow (becoming ice) formed and hardened by the wind. These can be from a few centimetres to two or three metres high, and make travelling hell.
plural sastrugi (sastrugis etc)
Wave-like stripes of snow (sastrugi) .. are formed, either on the plains on land or on the level ice of the sea, by any wind of long continuance.
1844 FP Wrangel Narrative of an expedition
[near White Island] Often as we marched the sledges would be brought up all standing by a sastrugus, or snow mound, caused by the wind.
1909 EH Shackleton Heart of the Antarctic
Scott. What’s that? A cairn? Bowers. Only sastrugi.
1944 D Stewart Fire on the snow
The direction of sastrugis at the site of the base indicates the prevailing wind direction.
1993 P Claassen, ed Draft environmental evaluation new SANAE IV facility
Sastrugi (Greenlandic ..) Stripeformed windblown formations of snow.
2006 H-JW Weihe Snow and ice
Bernadette Hince is a dictionary-maker and natural historian with a passionate interest in language and the world’s cold places.