Does anyone find this ridiculous? And even if they have these in encyclopedias, how could you find them? Oh well, I’ve always called them ‘snowglobes,’ or ‘snowdomes’ and so does everyone else I know of.
I wonder if this is highly regional? I’m from Ohio, by the way. I’m living in a different place, Washington, where they call ‘soda’ just plain ‘pop’ and pretty much everything around here is quite informal-sounding. I have never thought to ask anyone what they call these things until just now. Perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut until I did so. But perhaps you could help me out here? I find this highly strange!
A cursory search on the web finds that they seem to be called snowglobes more often than snowdomes, which also could refer to indoor ski resorts. It’s perplexing. But it’s not in ANY dictionary! Well, I’m off to bed. I have to get my new driver’s licence at the ‘Licence’ place. (Rather than the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.)
I think I much prefer [rhombicosidodecahedron](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Small Rhombicosidodecahedron.html). Maybe niveous thixotropic rhombicosidodecahedron.
I saw the subject and thought: Well, this’ll be the shortest response ever. Not only wasn’t it the “Snowglobes, sill!” response that I expected, but it was completely wrong as well! For shame Cecil! We all know it’s snowglobes!
Like most around here I’ve only ever heard of “snowglobes” or occasionally “snowdomes”.
What about ones which don’t use “snow”? I remember (though can’t find a link to) a website selling the Plagues of Egypt in globe form. For instance, the one for locusts was a guy recoiling in terror (seemingly from nothing) and when you shook it a bunch of little locust-shaped things would swarm up and over him. “Darkness” was basically a little town and rather than tiny solid things it had a heavy ink in the base which would swirl up and occlude the globe.
I once tried to help a Quebecoise tourist on the Atlantic City boardwalk who was having trouble cmmunicating with the guy behind the counter at a souvenir shop. She was asking for a boule de neige, which I initially translated as “snow cone,” since they sold those, and since the top scoop is rather snowball-ish, but then she took me by the hand to the snowglobes in the window. And asked me what they were called in English.
So I said, in effect: “Aha! You want a… um… er… one of these fake snow things that you shake up. Um, I think we call them something like snowglobes…”
That’s the first time in my life that I found English language vocabulary limited.
I love that! I’m not sure what this says about me, but I’ve got to have one, even if I have to make my own. Maybe I’ll make a Black plague one. How cool would that be?
BTW, they’re called snowglobes. I wonder what I’ll call my plague globe…
The website http://www.snowdomes.com belongs to a company called “Global Shakeup”, but they call their products “Snowglobes” and “Snowdomes” (and “Float Pens”, but that’s neither here nor there). Their home page has a footnote on the word “Showdomes” reading:
I’ve heard of them as snowglobes, or snowdomes. I think it is pretty well understood what one means when they say one or the other, but ‘shake -em ups’, I think cecil just pulled this one out of his backside. No-one would understand what one ment if they heard that term.
I work in a retail store that sells these so called “shake-em-up’s”, but we (as well as our suppliers) only ever refer to them as snowglobes, snowdomes, or water domes. Once in a while we get a manufactuer who will insist that they are called “water balls” :smack: but we ignore them and stick with globe or dome. (water dome is used to refer to all the non-snowing snowglobes, which would include those nifty plagues globes.)
I have never heard anyone other than Cecil refer to them as Shake-em-up’s. :eek:
I’m not sure what this says about me, but I’ve got to have one, even if I have to make my own. Maybe I’ll make a Black plague one. How cool would that be? 