Snow refers to the frozen, crystalline state of water that falls as precipitation. It commonly describes any similar frozen form of a gas or liquid, a snowfall; a blanket of frozen, crystalline water, and a shade of the color white, which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to the moving pattern of random dots displayed on a television, etc., when no transmission signal is being received, cocaine, and a square-rigged vessel, differing from a brig only in that she has a trysail mast close abaft the mainmast, on which a large trysail is hoisted, so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Snow as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include to have snow fall from the sky, to hoodwink someone, especially by presenting confusing information, and to bluff in draw poker by refusing to draw any cards, which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
