Winter Vocabulary

I'm wearing extra clothes and I've got a blanket to keep me warm. It's cold and grey outside today. This seems like a good day for a post about winter words!

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​Vocabulary

Hibernate
Some animals hibernate for the winter. This means that they go into a kind of sleep to save energy when there is less food available. Animals that hibernate include polar bears, hedgehogs, tortoises and some bats.

Ice skating (or simply skating)
This is a way to move on the ice wearing special boots with a metal blade on the bottom, called ice skates.

Skiing
Skis are long pieces of wood or plastic which you attach to your feet to move on the snow and skiing is the activity or sport of moving on skis, often down a slope or mountain.

Sledge (especially UK English) / sled (especially US English) / toboggan
Something which you can sit on to slide down a hill that’s covered in snow. Sledging is a popular activity for children.

Snowball
A ball made of snow, usually made to throw at somebody else for fun in a snowball fight!
 
Snowman
A man made of snow. A snowman usually consists of a large ball for the body, a smaller ball for the head and decorated with a hat and scarf.

Gloves
Clothing worn on the hands to keep them warm.

Mittens
Like gloves except that they don’t have separate fingers. There’s one part for the four fingers and a separate part for the thumb.

Scarf
Clothing which you wear around your neck to keep warm outside in the winter.

Wrap up warm
This means to put lots of clothes on to stay warm.

Blanket
A woollen square or rectangle which you can put on a bed for an extra layer of warmth or to sit or lie under on the sofa when you’re feeling cold.

Central heating
This is a heating system for a house or other building. All the heaters in the house can be turned on or off with one switch. In the UK, water is usually heated by a gas boiler and then sent through pipes to radiators all around the house.

Power cut (UK) / power failure/outage (USA)
This is when there is no electricity coming to your building, and usually the other building around you too. It can happen at any time of year but it is often caused by bad weather in winter.

Winter solstice
The shortest day of the year, usually 21st December.

New Year’s Eve
This is 31st December, the day before New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Day
This is 1st January. In many countries, it’s a national holiday.

Winter idioms

Snowed under
If you say that you are snowed under, it means that you have too much work to do or too many things to deal with and you don’t know how you will get everything done.

Snowball effect
If you roll a snowball down a hill, it will get bigger and bigger as it collects more snow. In a similar way, some small situations grow bigger and bigger at a faster and faster rate and this is called the snowball effect. A small success can lead to a bigger success and then that leads to an even bigger one. The same can happen with problems too.

On thin ice
If you say that someone is “on thin ice” or “skating on thin ice” it means that they should be careful because they are doing (or saying) something which could lead to a bad result.

The tip of the iceberg
We say "This is the tip of the iceberg" when we see just a small part of a problem but the actual problem is much bigger, just like a real iceberg in the sea is mostly underwater and not visible. 
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Ice breaker (or ice-breaker)
An ice breaker is an activity or game which helps people to relax and start talking to each other, for example, in a class or at a party where nobody know each other. The activity helps to break the ice.


You might also like this post about winter weather vocabulary.

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