snowing

Pluralsnowings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of snow.

   By midnight it was snowing so heavily that the roads vanished.

   It kept snowing throughout the afternoon, blanketing the orchard.

   Note

   Mostly a weather form built on an empty it: it was snowing, it kept snowing, with nothing actually doing the snowing. The verb can also take an object, so a tree can be snowing petals onto a path. In slang, someone snowing you is dazzling you with flattery or confusing detail. As a gerund it can look like the noun for a snowfall, but only the noun takes a plural.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An occasion when snow falls from the sky onto the ground.

   An early snowing left a thin layer across the valley floor.

   The heavy snowing closed the mountain pass for two full days.

   Similarsnowfall

   Note

   A countable noun, unlike snow itself: it takes an article and a plural, so a single early snowing can be followed by further snowings across a winter. Thomas Moore, writing before 1852, used the plural in a figure. He compared pages to something "white as the snowings of that heaven", letting the word carry the whiteness of fresh snow into an image of peace.

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