Snowfall

How to spell snowfall

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce snowfall

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does snowfall mean?

1. nounA fall of snow, or the amount of snow that falls in a given period.

Snowfall in a sentence

• The overnight snowfall closed several mountain roads.

• The region recorded its heaviest snowfall in a decade.

Where does snowfall come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'snow' and 'fall', both of which are deeply native words. 'Snow' descends from the Old English 'snaw', a word with relatives across the Germanic languages and ultimately from an ancient root meaning the frozen white precipitation, the same root that gives Latin 'nix' and the 'niv' in 'niveous'. 'Fall' comes from Old English 'feallan', meaning to drop or descend, also of Germanic stock. The compound itself is comparatively young, appearing in English around the early nineteenth century as people needed a single noun for the quantity or event of snow descending. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds no real surprises, though the doubled 'l' at the end occasionally trips writers who think of 'fall' on its own.

How the word is built

• snow (frozen precipitation)
• fall (descent, from Old English feallan: to fall)