Rainy Words
English language beautifully reflects the importance of rain and how much this mere meteorological phenomenon influences our lives. In English, to be a „rainmaker" is a synonym for being a success, an achiever, a triumph, a star—even a celebrity or a winner. The idea of possessing power over precipitation is fascinating to us, primarily for the obvious reason that rainwater is an absolute necessity for human survival. Rainmaking shamans are still being worshipped today and more or less successfully employ their special abilities to control rain. To transfer this unique capacity metaphorically onto a human being that is successful in his or her life is a heart-warming linguistic gesture of the love and appreciation of rain.
There also have been recent scientific experiments that more or less successfully have tried to suppress rain. It falls into the same category. A rainmaker that refuses to make rain has just as much magical power as one that fulfils his job nicely.
The linguistic wealth of wet words isn’t just the amount of meteorological definitions of different types of rain but rather the amount of rather creative synonyms for rain. What matters to us, things we love or simply appreciate and need, is usually endowed with lots of different names, the same way as famously the Inuit have lots of words for snow, people may give their loved ones lots of different caressing nicknames. English language has come up with a lot of caressing nicknames for rain:
barrage
CBC sunshine
cat-and-dog weather
cloud juice
cloudburst
condensation
deluge
drencher
driving rain
drizzle
fall
flood
flurry
hail
heavy dew
liquid sunshine
mist
mizzle
monsoon
plethora
pour
pouring
precip
precipitation
raindrops
rainfall
rainstorm
Scotch mist
sheets
shower
showers
sky juice
sleet
spate
spit
sprinkle
sprinkling
stream
sun shower
torrent
volley
wet stuff
window washer
(source: answers.com)
