means Soft white crystals of frozen water that fall from clouds and blanket the ground in cold weather.

from From Old English 'snāw,' part of a deep Germanic family — German 'Schnee,' Dutch 'sneeuw' — all tracing back to a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root '*sneigwh-,' meaning to snow. That same ancient root surfaces in Latin 'nix' (snow), the source of words like 'niveous,' and in Greek 'nipha.' In short: nearly every European tongue has been muttering some version of this word at the falling sky for thousands of years.