Having read the article Fifty words for rain
on the BBC website, I now know that the Inuit do not have fifty words
for snow. I may have already known this, thanks to Stephen Fry and QI,
but am not entirely sure if I did or not! Never-the-less, it doesn't
hurt to repeat contradictions and corrections to commonly accepted and
oft repeated erroneous statements.
The article starts - "If the Inuit apocryphally have 50 words for snow, why don't British
people have 50 words for rain... or at least more words than the few
they normally employ, asks Kevin Connolly."
Kevin Connolly seems to be bemoaning the fact that we are inundated with so much rain, but standard English does not mirror the volume of rain we have with the volume of words we can use to describe it. Also, that perhaps our weather forecasters are lacking a little imagination when it comes to their broadcasts?
The article continues - "...when we posed the question to the Broadcasting House audience on Radio 4
we were deluged, inundated and flooded with suggestions for words for
rain."
Therein lies the one small problem with an otherwise very interesting article. The question posed at the beginning of the article asks "...why don't British
people have 50 words for rain... or at least more words than the few
they normally employ" The fact of the matter is that the British people DO employ fifty words for rain, possibly even more, but standard English does not. The fact that they were " deluged, inundated and flooded with suggestions for words for
rain" when they appealed for suggestions from the Broadcasting House audience on Radio 4, proves this
Kevin says "One heartening conclusion is that colloquial English is a lot more
vibrant, colourful and expressive than its slightly grander cousin
deployed in the Met Office." So, British weather forecasters are the ones that have the unvaried vocabulary. Well, regional studios do regional news accompanied by regional weather, so why can't our regional weather forecasters do the weather using local colloquialisms? Possibly, the reason why it isn't done, is because there are so many different colloquialisms and even people living in the same city, don't always understand each others turn of phrase.
Here is an example of a weather forecast using all those interesting and different words for rain harvested from the Radio 4 audience. Which broadcast do you prefer, this one or the traditional standard English?
So, exactly how many words do the British have for rain?
First of all, how many are mentioned in the BBC article:
- Rain (obviously)
- Downfall
- Drizzle/Drizzleing
- Deluge
- Downpour
- Dreich
- Soft weather
- Tipple/Tippleing
- Pelting
- Raining cats and dogs
- Luttering down
- Siling down
- Plothering
- Raining stair-rods
- Raining chair-legs
- Raining like a cow relieving itself
- Chucking it down
- Mizzle/Mizzling
- Grizzerable
- Woodfiddly rain
- Mawky
- Pishpotikle weather
From the comments on the article:
- Raining upwards
- Raining Elephants and Whales
- Teeming rain
- Bucketing down
- Lashing down
- Heavy rain
- Droughting down
- Hose-pipe banning down
- Hammering it down
- Pissing it down
- Pelting down
- Tipping down
- Gutting
- Bouncing
- Stoating
- Pishing
- Misting
- Horizontal
- Sheeting it down
- Rain of biblical proportions
- Liquid sunshine
- Nice weather for ducks
- Deemin doon
- Spitting
- Welsh rain
- Soaking
- Pipmly Sissing
That's 49 words already. The thesaurus has suggested the following:
- Cloudburst
- Drencher
- Heavy dew
- Pouring
- Precipitation
These are my suggestions in addition to the above:
- Torrential
- Monsoon
- Spits and spots
Plus, there are 26 words in Welch (and they are part of Britain) for rain. As quoted from the comments BBC article:
bwrw
byrlymu
glawio
llifo
bwrwglaw
towlud (dial.)
dafnu
taflu
pigo
hegar law
glaw mân
lluwchlaw
gwlithlaw
chwipio bwrw
brasfwrw
pistyllio
sgrympian (dial.)
piso
cawodi
curlaw
arllwys
tywallt
tollti
stido (dial.)
dymchwel
tresio
Mae hi'n bwrw hen wragedd a ffin (it's raining old women and sticks :))"
By my reckoning that is 82 British words for rain. Can you add anymore?