So many words #007

One popular misconception is that Eskimos have 200 (or 300, or 400, the sky's the limit when you're making stuff up) words for snow. Eskimos actually don't have all that many words for snow, but their language, which is agglutinative, can build a near-infinite number of compounds that describe different kinds of snow. Us linguists can only hope that the old chestnut about eskimos and snow will be replaced by a more suitable example, like the hundred or so euphemisms for dying in Chinese.

A language which does have a lot of words for snow is Norwegian. One look out my window today would tell you why. Words like kram snø, skare, driv, pudder, slaps, sludd, hagl are all examples of words that describe snow with different kinds of consistency, and often don't have a good English equivalent. 

鏟雪 chǎnxuě - to shovel snow. Used in the word 鏟雪車 chǎnxuěchē, snowplow.

雪車 xuěchē - snowmobile. Measure word is 部 or 輛, I'm not entirely sure which one it is.

滑雪板 huáxuěbǎn - sled. 

雪球 xuěqiú - snowball. 

冰雪聰明 bīngxuěcōngmíng - cooly intelligent. Used to describe (what else?) smart women.