Word.ws English Dictionary

snow queen

snow queen noun: a plant of the Pacific coast of the US that blooms in late winter, of species Veronica regina-nivalis (syn. Synthyris reniformis).

snow queen: a plant of the Pacific coast of the US that blooms in late winter, of species Veronica...
Image: Walter Siegmund, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

snow queen (plural snow queens)

  1. A plant of the Pacific coast of the US that blooms in late winter, of species Veronica regina-nivalis (syn. Synthyris reniformis).
  2. (derogatory, often, slang) A black gay man who prefers to have relations with white men.
    • You have a lot of people of color here who have problems with their own racial identity. What we in the Black homosexual community term "snow queens." There's lots of them here who will not even speak to you, who will look right through you like you don't even exist, and consider association with...1984 December 15, Charles Fuller, Henry Craig Chinn, “Black Men's Association of Boston”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 22, page 10

Proper noun capitalized: Snow Queen

the Snow Queen

  1. A female fairy tale character with magical power over snow and ice.
    • The fur and the cap, which were made entirely of snow, fell off, and he saw a lady, tall and white, it was the Snow Queen.1872 [1845], H. P. Paull, transl., The Snow Queen, translation of Sneedronningen by Hans Christian Andersen (in Danish)
    • Daphne wanted to tell her that a Snow Queen can know nothing of love, only of destruction, but she remained silent, just looked away.2009, Justine Picardie, Daphne, A&C Black, →ISBN

Forms of snow queen

pluralsnow queens

Origin of snow queen

A literal translation into English from the original Danish Sneedronningen, from snee (“snow”, an older spelling of sne) + dronning (“queen”) + -en (suffixed definite article) from a fairy tale first published in 1845 by Hans Christian Andersen, based on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by a little boy and girl, Kai and Gerda.

Questions about snow queen

What does snow queen mean?
Snow queen means a plant of the Pacific coast of the US that blooms in late winter, of species Veronica regina-nivalis (syn. Synthyris reniformis).
What part of speech is snow queen?
Snow queen can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of snow queen?
The plural of snow queen is snow queens.

Words near snow queen in the dictionary

  1. snow porches
  2. snow pudding
  3. snow puddings
  4. snow quartz
  5. snow quartzes
  6. snow queen
  7. snow queens
  8. snow racer
  9. snow racers
  10. snow roach
  11. snow roller

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: snow queen (page history and authors); Snow Queen (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Snow Queen.wav.

Cite this entry: “snow queen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/snow_queen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.