snowflaken.

1734 Cupid & Psyche 28 Soft as the cygnet's down his wings, And as the falling snowflake fair.

1822 P. B. Shelley Lines: We meet Not ii That moment is gone for ever,..Like a snowflake upon the river.

1847 W. H. Prescott Hist. Conquest Peru I. iii. iv. 390 A white cloud of pavilions was seen covering the ground as thick as snow-flakes.

1878 T. H. Huxley Physiography (ed. 2) 63 The largest snow-flakes fall when the temperature is near the freezing point.

1770 T. Pennant Brit. Zool. (new ed.) IV. 17 Snow Flake. These birds appear in hard weather on the Cheviot Hills, and in the Highlands of Scotland, in amazing flocks.

1793 J. Sinclair Statist. Acct. Scotl. VII. 547 The snowflake, the rail or corncrake.

1837 R. Dunn Ornithol. Orkney & Shetl. 79 The Snowflake appears regularly in both countries.

1845 Zoologist 3 822 In hard winters snowflakes come from the North by thousands.

1872 E. Coues Key to N. Amer. Birds 133 Snow Bunting. Snowflake. In breeding plumage, pure white, the back, wings and tail variegated with black.

1777 W. Curtis Flora Londinensis I. Pl. 127 As it differs very essentially in its fructification from the Galanthus, we have thought it necessary to give it the new English name of Snowflake.

1806 J. Galpine Synoptical Compend Brit. Bot. 168 Leucojum æstivum, summer snow-flake.

1866 J. Lindley & T. Moore Treasury Bot. II. 1067/2 Spring Snowflake, Erinosma.

1882 Garden 28 Jan. 56/3 The Snowflake..is in full bloom, but owing to want of sun, has not expanded its flowers.

1899 Gardening Illustr. 27 May 167/1 In the earliest spring..the Spring Snowflake (L. vernum) is flowering in southern gardens... Later on comes the taller-growing Summer Snowflake (L. æstivum).

1882 S. F. A. Caulfeild & B. C. Saward Dict. Needlework 452/2 Snow~flake, a term employed to denote a particular method of weaving woollen cloths, by which process small knots are thrown upon the face.

1890 Daily News 8 Jan. 1/6 A Large Lot..Snowflake Costumes, all Pure Wool.

1882 Daily News 9 Mar. 2 Potatoes,..foreign Snow-flakes.

1919 Bull. Amer. Inst. Mining Engineers Feb. 183 The appearance of ‘snow-flakes’ is unmistakable... The white silvery area, which always has the appearance of being of a very coarsely crystalline structure, in the specimen stands out in bold contrast to the darker background, and readily justifies the use of the term ‘snow-flakes’.

1925 Jrnl. Iron & Steel Inst. 111 113 A defect known as snow-flakes or flakes (America), hair-cracks or hair-lines (Great Britain), Flocken (Germany), and cassures ligneuses (France), has received much attention among manufacturers and inspectors of alloy steel forgings.

1942 Metal Progress XLII. 203/2 ‘Coarsely crystalline fracture’ surrounded by normal fibrous metal in tensile and impact specimens showing ‘flakes’, ‘snowflakes’, ‘fish-eyes’, and such variously named seats of hydrogen embrittlement..can be immediately recognized by that outstanding characteristic whereby the affected zones stand out brilliantly against the darker fibrous background.

1956 W. G. Walter Further Outlook iii. iv. 100 Jim Bursley had explained the snowflake curve to me and we had discussed the projection of such a curve into three dimensions.

1975 Sci. Amer. Nov. 144/2 Take the analyst's ‘snowflake’ curve.., which is made in an elementary way from an equilateral triangle of unit side by replacing the middle third of each side with a ‘cape’, itself the two jutting equal sides of a triangle a third as large as the original, and so on, repeating indefinitely.

1978 Sci. Amer. Apr. 21/2 Among the fractals that exhibit strong regularity the best-known are the Peano curves that completely fill the finite region and the beautiful snowflake curve discovered by the Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch in 1904.