A great game of telephone inflated the number until, in 1984, the New York Times published an editorial claiming the Inuit have “100 synonyms” for the frozen white stuff we lump under a single term.
I (native speaker of German) have heard jokes that among the Inuit they claim that in German there are 100 words to complain about snow.
Inuit languages really do have many words for snow, linguists found—and other languages have conceptual specialties, too, potentially revealing what a culture values
English: We value nothing.
Truth: The words in English that have the most synonyms: Good, bad, move, tell, and the king of all of them: Drunk
Shit-faced. Blotto. Three sheets to the wind. Tipsy. Stinkin’ drunk. Faded. ….
My god, you are right. The list is endless. What a rich and sophisticated culture I hail from!
what having to turn all the water into beer to make it safe to drink does to a culture
An ancient and proud race of telephone sanitizers.
