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graupel

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 23 March 2025

Etymology

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Graupel (sense 1) which has fallen on a street in Elko, Nevada, United States.

Borrowed from German Graupel(wetter) (literally “graupel (weather)”).[1] Graupel is a back-formation from graupeln (“to hail (with soft hailstones)”) + -el (diminutive suffix); and graupeln is from Graupe (“hulled grain, pearl barley”)[2] (ultimately from Proto-Slavic *krūpà (“grainy substance; groats; hail”) and Proto-Indo-European *krewp-) + -eln (suffix forming verbs, often with a diminutive or frequentative sense).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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graupel (countable and uncountable, plural graupels) (meteorology)

  2. (uncountable) A precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water condense on a snowflake.
    Synonyms: granular snow, hominy snow, popcorn snow, soft hail
    • 1873 April, “The Leipzig Conference”, in Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine, volume VIII, number LXXXVII, London: Edward Stanford, […], →OCLC, page 42:
      Is it desirable in giving the falls of hail to draw a distinction between "graupel" and true hail?
    • 1877 January 24 (date written), Frederick E[rnest] Sawyer, “November”, in Meteorology of Brighton, 1876, [Brighton, East Sussex?]: [s.n.], published [1877], →OCLC, page 2:
      November.— […] Smart shower of graupel (i.e. frozen snow in pellets), with snow at 9 p.m. on 10th.
      Reprinted from the Brighton Herald (27 January 1877).
    • 1876 November 2, “Notes”, in Nature: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science, volume XV, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 17:
      In a paper in this month's Petermann's Mittheilungen Prof. H. Fritz treats of the Geographical Distribution of Hail. […] [B]alls of true hail hav[e] an icy structure, whereas the balls of graupel are only small pellets of snow. […] With increase in latitude and in height the fall of graupel increases and that of hail decreases, while hailstones of large size are most frequent towards the equator.
    • 1894, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, “A Wager”, in Perlycross: A Tale of the Western Hills, London: Sampson Low, Marston, & Company […], →OCLC, page 238:
      The steam of the horses and their breath came back in turbid clouds, and the snow, or soft hail (now known as graupel), cut white streaks through them into travellers' eyes, and danced on the roof like lozenges.
  3. (countable) A small ball of rime resulting from this process.
    Synonym: snow pellet
    • 1951 September 15, Donald G. Yerg, “Tikhomirov, E., On the Shape of Graupels and Hailstones (O Forme Krupy i Grada). Meteorologiia i Gidrologiia, 2, No. 9: 66–67, 1936”, in Annotated Bibliography on Snow, Ice, and Permafrost […] (SIPRE Report; 12), [Hanover, N.H.]: Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 340, column 2:
      It is established that graupels and hailstones are cone-shaped with rounded apexes and that they become egg-shaped as a result of growth during descent.
    • 2013, Pao K[uan] Wang, “The Shape and Size of Cloud and Precipitation Particles”, in Physics and Dynamics of Clouds and Precipitation, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 30:
      [W]hen an ice or snow crystal collides with supercooled droplets, the droplets will freeze on the surface of the crystal to form rime. […] [C]ontinued riming will eventually produce a particle that is completely covered by rimes such that the original crystal shape can no longer be recognized. The particle now becomes a graupel (sometimes also called a soft hail or snow pellet). […] By convention, a graupel should be smaller than 5 mm in diameter. If it becomes greater than 5 mm in diameter (2.5 mm in radius) it will be called hail.

Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “graupel, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2024.
  2. ^ “graupel, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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