Surrounded by snow, Inuits have a dozen basic words in Inuktitut to name it according to its state, its movement, its appearance, its function. Thus 'qanik' is the falling snow, 'aputi' the snow on the ground, 'pukak' the crystallized snow, 'aniu' the snow used to make water... Not to mention the innumerable terms formed by agglutination, like 'qanittaq' which literally means 'added snow' to describe the freshly fallen snow.