snowflake
Americannoun
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one of the small, feathery masses or flakes in which snow falls.
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Facetious Slang. a person who is considered unique and deserving of special treatment.
I have twenty-eight special snowflakes in my classroom, and their parents’ demands make teaching impossible!
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Slang. a person who is easily offended, overly sensitive, or emotionally fragile.
You snowflakes need to leave your safe spaces and engage with people who disagree with your beliefs.
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Meteorology.
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an agglomeration of snow crystals falling as a unit.
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any snow particle.
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any of certain European plants belonging to the genus Leucojum, of the amaryllis family, resembling the snowdrop.
noun
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one of the mass of small thin delicate arrangements of ice crystals that fall as snow
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any of various European amaryllidaceous plants of the genus Leucojum, such as L. vernum ( spring snowflake ), that have white nodding bell-shaped flowers
Usage
What else does snowflake mean? No, we're not walking in a winter wonderland. Snowflake, here, is a political insult for someone who is perceived as too sensitive, often used for millennials and liberals.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of snowflake
Explanation
When it snows, each individual bit of snow you see is a snowflake. Each snowflake is made up of an ice crystal—or several ice crystals stuck together. At the center of every snowflake is a tiny particle of dust, which attracts drops of water that freeze and form crystals. If you look at a snowflake through a microscope, you can see how complex its pattern is—and each one really is different from every other snowflake. This fact led to the informal, derogatory meaning of this word, "someone who's overly sensitive because they're supposedly so special."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Stu Feldschuh, owner of Snowflake Ice Cream Shoppe in Riverhead, N.Y., has seen some soft spots in the local economy.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 3, 2026
Though the company’s longstanding databases links them to AI data-software winners like Snowflake and Datadog, Oracle’s software baggage may be weighing the whole company down.
From Barron's • Jun. 12, 2026
The analyst believes Snowflake is experiencing a “flywheel effect where AI accelerates core consumption, and core data gravity fuels further AI adoption.”
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and one Snowflake beat doesn’t mark the end of the software winter.
From Barron's • May 28, 2026
He’d casually mentioned having to go to the library to check Snowflake, which led to the conversation we were having.
From "We Are the Ants" by Shaun David Hutchinson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
