As a cold and blustery day comes to a drizzly end, I am reminded of my least favorite part of winter: the cold.  While I generally feel blessed to live in an area with four distinct seasons, that gratitude tends to fade rather quickly at the first sign of sub-freezing temperatures.  The worst part of winter’s blue touch is driving on those icy roads.  I always imagine having car problems and having to walk in several feet of snow with small kids.  So at about this time of year, I load up the car with winter gear for everyone, just in case we have to walk or someone forgets a coat.

With all this talk and thinking of cold, I finally get around to today’s topic: the many words we use to describe that chilly feeling.  I swear the temperature in my office has dropped five degrees from all these words.

While you have probably heard arctic, biting, brisk, frigid and glacial to describe how cold it is outside, you may not have heard of some other synonyms for cold, such as:

• Algid
• Boreal
• Brumal
• Frigorific
• Frore
• Hiemal
• Rimy

Or how about some common phrases used to describe bitter, blustery, biting chills?

• Cold as Christmas
• Cold as a charity
• Cold as a frog
• Cold as a stone
• Cold as iron
• Cold as marble

So next time you find yourself in winter’s gelid embrace, feel free to wax poetic on some of the less common terms to describe the nippy pickle you are in.