[Loch-Ruadh] word for the day

Jane Sitton lymadelina at yahoo.com
Thu Sep 5 08:25:15 PDT 2002


Your daily vocabulary lesson:

pogonip • \PAH-guh-nip\ • (noun): a dense winter fog
containing frozen particles that is formed in deep
mountain valleys of the western U.S.

Example sentence:  "Never, ever again will I drive
through the mountains in Nevada in winter," Renee told
us, "after driving through a pogonip last year, with
zero visibility."

Did you know?
In the mountains of the western U.S., the fog
condenses into tiny, biting ice particles in extremely
cold weather.  The English-speaking settlers who
encountered this unpleasant and sometimes scary
phenomenon when they went out West in the 1800s needed
a word for it.  So they borrowed "paginappih"
("cloud") from the Southern Paiute, a Shoshonean
people of the southwestern U.S., altering it to
"pogonip."  "Pogonip" is also the designation of an
aptly named wilderness area north of Santa Cruz that
is often enveloped in fog.

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