English

Snowdrops in winter

Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in Chute, Wiltshire, in England

Noun

snowdrop ‎(plural snowdrops)

1. 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, depending on species, between autumn and late winter or early spring, all native to temperate Eurasia.

Derived terms

• giant snowdrop
• snowdrop anemone (Anemone sylvestris)
• snowdrop tree
• snowdrop windflower

Translations

See also

• galanthophile

Verb

snowdrop ‎(third-person singular simple present snowdrops, present participle snowdropping, simple past and past participle snowdropped)

1. (Australia, slang, transitive, intransitive) To steal clothing (especially women's underwear) from a clothesline.
   • 1989, Southerly: The Magazine of the Australian English Association, Sydney:

     MS: There was a lot of snowdropping in those days? SL: Oh, I've never actually stooped to snowdropping; I used to go into shops. Boosting, man, boosting. But you learn how to survive.

   • 1992, Peter O'Toole, Loitering With Intent: The Early Years:

     'Snowdropping' is the business of some poor sods who, often from laundry drying on a clothes line, pinch items of ladies' underwear, take them away and sniff them.

   • 2011, Tony Hardy, Fifteen Percent Pregnant: A Story of Life, and Love, and IVF:

     It'll be like snowdropping clothes from a clothesline. We'll snowdrop a baby.

See also

• snowdrop on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• snowdrop on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Galanthus on Wikispecies.Wikispecies