Whorfian Weather

   A CNN weather reporter referred to a coming winter storm and its "liquid water." Supposedly, he did so to differentiate that from "frozen water," which would be snow, sleet, hail or ice. Water, by definition, is liquid.
   The language has several terms for various forms of precipitation other than rain, including snow, sleet, or hail, all of which are specific types of "frozen water." The words are available. Don't insult the intelligence of the audience by inventing terms needlessly.
   The English language has, of course, terms for intermediate forms of precipitation, such as freezing rain -- precipitation that falls as water and quickly turns to ice. Use them as appropriate. If not appropriate, don't.

   Depending on the needs of a culture, its language may have only one or it may have many terms for some thing and its variations. Eskimos, for example, have many different words for various types of snow, whereas English has only one. It's not that English speakers can't refer to various types of snow -- ask any skier. But various qualifiers are used to do so. Examples include granular snow, powder snow, wet snow, and others.
   Arabic has many words for different types of camel, but no single word for camels in general. English, on the other hand, has only one.
   Horse fanciers, on the other hand, not only have a single word in English for horse in general, but also other words for a specific type of horse, even within a given breed. These terms include stallion, mare, colt, filly, yearling, and gelding.
    The point is not that members of a language-culture group cannot conceive of differences and concepts within a given field, but that it's not important or useful to them in their culture.
   Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist, ran afoul of that when he found that certain tribes in the American Southwest had no terms for slicing up time. He concluded that they therefore had no concept of time. Yet when these same people switched to English, they can and did use such terms as minute, hour and day. for example.
   Even so, they were not locked in to the movements of a clock, much as English speakers are. Hence, they were referred to as "operating on Indian time."