sastruga means any of a series of long, wavelike ridges or grooves formed on a snow surface by the wind, especially in polar plains, and surfaces of ice-covered lakes/seas. These dunes of snow may be blown across the plains like wind-driven waves. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 89 out of 100.
Why this word is great
SASTRUGA — [Noun] A long, sharp-edged, wavelike ridge or groove carved by persistent wind into a hardened snow surface, most commonly on polar plains or frozen seas. From German Sastruga, from Russian заструга (zastruga), a noun derived from the verb zastrugátʾ or zastrogátʾ, meaning "to plane" or "to shave down (wood)." Unlike a "dune," a soft accumulation of granular sand, or a "drift," a mere heap of wind-blown snow, a sastruga is the wind's sustained act of subtraction, a terrain of sharpened negative space. It is the frozen equivalent of planed timber, the razor-backed spine of snow too hard to kick, the cruel corduroy of a plain that offers no purchase—the landscape remembering, with perfect and indifferent geometry, every storm that has ever passed over it.
noun
- Any of a series of long, wavelike ridges or grooves formed on a snow surface by the wind, especially in polar plains, and surfaces of ice-covered lakes/seas. These dunes of snow may be blown across the plains like wind-driven waves.