Snowclone
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A formulaic phrase that can be customized to fit a variety of contexts.
"I stumbled upon the site the other day, when I was looking up the origins of the "Im not an X, but I play one on TV" snowclone."
- 1 To use a snowclone in speech or writing. intransitive
"Many journalists are guilty of serial snowcloning, but snowclones aren't always a symptom of laziness – they can be a cultural in-joke."
Example
More examples"The phrase "X is the new Y" is an example of a snowclone."
Etymology
Blend of snow cone + clone, in reference to the phrase “If Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, X have as many for Y” (which is an example of a snowclone). Coined by American television writer and economist Glen Whitman in January 2004, in response to Geoffrey Pullum on the blog Language Log.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.