Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of several bulbous Eurasian plants of the genus Galanthus, having solitary, nodding white flowers that bloom in early spring.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A low herb. Galanthus nivalis, a very early wild flower of European woods, often cultivated.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A bulbous plant (Galanthus nivalis) bearing white flowers, which often appear while the snow is on the ground. It is cultivated in gardens for its beauty.
  • noun See Silver-bell tree, under Silver, a.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of the 20 species of the genus Galanthus of the Amaryllidaceae, bulbous flowering plants, bearing a solitary, pendulous, white, bell-shaped flower that appears at the end of winter.
  • verb Australia, slang To steal clothing (especially women's underwear) from a clothesline.
  • verb To drop food aid across a wide area from an aircraft.
  • verb sexual slang to transfer semen from mouth to mouth while kissing.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun common anemone of eastern North America with solitary pink-tinged white flowers

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From snow +‎ drop.

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Examples

  • All the flowers are awesome, but the snowdrop is my favourite of all–simple, complex, fragrant and happy.

    Feb Bloom Day 2009 « Fairegarden 2009

  • Botanists disagree on whether the snowdrop is a native British plant or an ornamental flower which was brought in and has now become naturalised.

    The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed 2009

  • The "snowdrop" of the title is a body that is discovered after the thaws: the idea being that in Russia, you can't take surfaces for granted; nor, the narrator explains in a letter to his fiancée, can he be taken for granted either.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011

  • A "snowdrop" is a corpse that lies buried or hidden in the snow until the thaw; also, in my book, a metaphor for dark, close and ultimately inescapable truths that the narrator, a drifting thirtysomething English lawyer, would prefer not to think about.

    The Guardian World News 2011

  • The "snowdrop" of the title is a body that is discovered after the thaws: the idea being that in Russia, you can't take surfaces for granted; nor, the narrator explains in a letter to his fiancée, can he be taken for granted either.

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 2011

  • A "snowdrop" is a corpse that lies buried or hidden in the snow until the thaw; also, in my book, a metaphor for dark, close and ultimately inescapable truths that the narrator, a drifting thirtysomething English lawyer, would prefer not to think about.

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • Identifying new cultivars of snowdrop takes an expert eye.

    In praise of … snowdrops | Editorial 2012

  • We are planning to go to Strathardle tomorrow for snowdrop-and-strawberry planting.

    Archive 2009-03-01 Jean 2009

  • Many of the little snowdrop shoots are already two or three inches tall, some showing bud.

    Countdown to Bloom « Sugar Creek Gardens’ Blog 2009

  • I had stayed up all night forgetting: my parents are alive, my brother's girlfriend isn't round, my skin is snowdrop white besides a few brown freckles.

    Snowdrop White 2010

Comments

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  • A "snowdrop" is a corpse that lies buried or hidden in the snow until the thaw.

    --The Guardian World News. Link here

    March 12, 2013

  • I just remembered what that reminds me of - the tagline from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, "Det som göms i snö kommer fram vid tö," an old Swedish proverb meaning "what is hidden in snow is revealed at thaw," although obviously not in a morbid way. To me, "snowdrop" is rather... uncreative, as far as kennings go, and to use it as the title of the book seems... let's just say I'm never going to read it.

    March 12, 2013

  • I read a novel called "Snowdrops" recently, set in Moscow. Wasn't really my cuppa but I love the snowdrop concept.

    March 13, 2013