{"id":51143,"date":"2021-10-19T11:31:56","date_gmt":"2021-10-19T10:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=51143"},"modified":"2021-10-22T16:41:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T15:41:24","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-snowflakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/10\/19\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-snowflakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Snowflakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love snowflakes. I enjoy crunching them underfoot on a crisp winter\u2019s day and the silky feeling that you get when skiing through a fresh fall.<\/p>\n<p>The word \u201csnowflake\u201d entered English in the early 18<sup>th<\/sup> century, first recorded in a pantomime called <em>Cupid &amp; Psyche, or, Colombine-Courtezan, <\/em>based on the tale told by the Numidian writer Apuleius (c124\u2013c170) in<em> The Golden Ass: \u201c<\/em>Soft as the cygnet&#8217;s down his wings, And as the falling snowflake fair\u201d. This was a surprisingly late entry, considering how early its separate components, \u201csnow\u201d and \u201cflake\u201d, had appeared. The earliest instance of \u201csnow\u201d cited in the <em>Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> is in the <em>Vespasian psalter<\/em>, from c825 AD: \u201c<em>Se sele\u00f0 snaw swe swe wulle<\/em>\u201d, which is an Old English translation of the Latin version of Psalm 147, verse 16: \u201cqui dat nivem quasi lanam\u201d, or in the original Hebrew<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-51174\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/hebrew_2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"213\" height=\"45\" \/><\/p>\n<p>which literally means \u201cthe giving of snow like wool\u201d, more clearly translated as \u201che spreads snow like a woollen blanket\u201d. \u201cFlake\u201d first appears, linked to snow, in Chaucer\u2019s <em>House of Fame<\/em> (c1384): \u201cAs flakes fallen in great snowes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But words evolve and, like many other words, \u201csnowflake\u201d has accrued many other meanings.<\/p>\n<p>Snow-buntings have white bodies and what appear to be flecks of snow on their wings. Starting in the late 17<sup>th<\/sup> century, they were therefore called snow-flecks. Then, in the late 18<sup>th<\/sup> century, that became corrupted into \u201csnowflakes\u201d.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_51145\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-51145\" style=\"width: 412px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowflake-.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-51145 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowflake-.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"412\" height=\"257\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowflake-.jpg 412w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowflake--300x187.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 412px) 100vw, 412px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-51145\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>The snow-bunting, snow-fleck, or snowflake (Wikimedia commons).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At about the same time, William Curtis published his <em>Flora Londinensis<\/em>, which included the picture of a purple foxglove that William Withering used as the frontispiece to his 1785 monograph on digitalis, <em>An Account of the Foxglove<\/em>. Curtis gave the name snowflake to the <em>Leucoium aestivum<\/em>, to distinguish it from <em>Galanthus<\/em> species of snowdrops, both members of the family <em>Amaryllidaceae<\/em>. These plants contain <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4111509\/pdf\/pone.0103223.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">galantamine<\/a>, a cholinesterase inhibitor that has been used to treat dementias; the results have been unimpressive in both <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/29131306\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/33704781\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">vascular dementias<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowplants.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-51146\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowplants.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"752\" height=\"642\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowplants.jpg 752w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowplants-300x256.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowplants-640x546.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 752px) 100vw, 752px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As in the psalm, snow and wool also come together in the use of the word \u201csnowflake\u201d, when it describes a method of weaving woollen cloth.<\/p>\n<p>A snowflake is also the name given to a hairline crack in metal, arising when the metal has not been allowed to cool down sufficiently slowly, and described in a 1919 issue of the <em>Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining Engineers<\/em> as a \u201cwhite silvery area, which always has the appearance of being of a very coarsely crystalline structure\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Snowflakes appear in mathematics too, and I discuss one instance in the <em>Interesting integer<\/em> section below. Here is another. Draw an equilateral triangle (Figure a; black). Now on the middle third of each side draw another equilateral triangle and erase its base (b; red). Now repeat that on each available side in the new shape (c; blue). If you continue doing this you get a shape that resembles a snow flake (d). This is a fractal pattern, one that has the same local characteristics no matter how high a magnification you choose to look at it. The boundary is of infinite length, because you can go on adding new triangles forever. However the area it encloses is finite and is 60% larger than the area of the original triangle.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-51147\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"792\" height=\"621\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles.jpg 792w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles-768x602.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/snowtriangles-640x502.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 792px) 100vw, 792px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One more meaning of \u201csnowflake\u201d remains to be explored.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-51144\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"777\" height=\"147\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled.jpg 777w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled-300x57.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled-768x145.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/cancelled-640x121.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 777px) 100vw, 777px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ah, well, I should have expected that to happen \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Finally, an aphorism from a book called <em>My\u015bli nieuczesane nowe<\/em> (<em>More Unkempt Thoughts<\/em>, 1964) by the Polish poet Stanis\u0142aw Jerzy Lec: \u017baden p\u0142atek \u015bniegu nie czuje si\u0119 odpowiedzialny za lawin\u0119. No snowflake feels responsible for an avalanche.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Jeffrey Aronson<\/strong>\u00a0is a clinical pharmacologist, working in the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine in Oxford\u2019s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. He is also president emeritus of the British Pharmacological Society.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong>\u00a0none declared.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-51177\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"901\" height=\"5575\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2.png 901w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2-768x4752.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2-248x1536.png 248w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2-331x2048.png 331w, https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/files\/2021\/10\/344_replace2-640x3960.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 901px) 100vw, 901px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love snowflakes. I enjoy crunching them underfoot on a crisp winter\u2019s day and the silky feeling that you get when skiing through a fresh fall. The word \u201csnowflake\u201d entered [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/10\/19\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-snowflakes\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":421,"featured_media":38359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5762],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jeff-aronsons-words"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . 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