Comments on: A Word in Season: Blizzard

By: Terminologia etc. » » Arriva il fantomatico Blizzard!

Terminologia etc. » » Arriva il fantomatico Blizzard! — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:36:17 +0000

[...] L’etimologia di blizzard, parola che contiene elementi di fonosimbolismo, è [...]

By: Gerald Baker

Gerald Baker — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:09:21 +0000

How can I get in touch with David Blizzard, who posted on this site on May 13? A cousin of mine, who lives in France, told me that “blizzard” has the same meaning in French that it has in English.

Re David’s comments, data from the 1980 US Census indicated that there were more “French Basques” living in Nebraska, that in any other place. That was wrong, but it was supposed that the figures were for some other ethnic group that had been confused with “Basques.”

Perhaps the so-called “Basques” were given that nickname by their enemies, taken from the Greek word “baskanos,” which means “sorcerer” and that
name might also have been applied to Gypsies, as in the song with the words, “Bonny, bonny Biscay.”

By: Mark Tuttle

Mark Tuttle — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:50:56 +0000

Here is a link to a recent news story in the Des Moines Register which cites a diary reference from Lephe Wells Coates, who was a school teacher and wife of the first postmaster of Spencer, Iowa. It was she who first uttered the word blizzard in reference to a snowstorm by relating it’s fury to a character, Mr. Blizzard in a story she had read. The children of Esther Ridley, from whom the town of Estherville, Ia was named, attended Coates’ school and carried the expression to Estherville, where it was later published.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100102/NEWS/1020327/Librarian–Blizzard-born-in-Spencer-not-Estherville

By: David Blizzard

David Blizzard — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:17:11 +0000

It is old French. “Bliz ‘ard” Pronounced “Blis ‘aird”

The reason it has such an obscure history is because French gypsies adopted the word and were very secretive people because of persecution in Europe.

By: Jack Gibbard

Jack Gibbard — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:43:32 +0000

“A similar case is blizzard. Alongside the predictable attempts to trace the word to its source (English? German? Irish?)…

‘Lexicographer attempts to trace word to its source’ shock. Shurely some mistake?

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:30:00 +0000

While I wouldn’t claim much about the following 1867 quote with “blizzard,” perhaps it illustrates the sense of blizzard as a violent blow or loud shot blast used in the context of consequent shower and rain of blackbirds. Maybe, or maybe not.
From the Newark [Ohio] Advocate, Friday, October 25, 1867; Issue 43; page 1, col E.
[a silly letter:] Sum Shootin in the Stayt of Ohio White?s Corners, Oct14, 1867 A. H..

It supposedly recounts an attempt to get rid of blackbirds by shooting at them.
“I and Sam loded and fired as fast as we could, and at every broadside the black rascals fell in showers around us….The crow was keerful to keep as high abuv the rest as possible, but every time he’d lite we’d give him a blast. At length, toward evenin, we kind of hived him, and the last of the blackbirds in a big old tree….Now, Sam, sez I, now for big lodes and a simultuous blizzard!….How it did rain blackbirds….”