also snow-tyre, 1952, "type of automobile tire that grips better in snow," from snow (n.) + tire (n.). Earlier mud-and-snow tire (1948).
Entries linking to snow-tire
snow n.
Middle English snou, from Old English snaw "snow, that which falls as snow; a fall of snow; a snowstorm," from Proto-Germanic *snaiwaz (source also of Old Saxon and Old High German sneo, Old Frisian and Middle Low German sne, Middle Dutch snee, Dutch sneeuw, German Schnee, Old Norse snjor, Gothic snaiws "snow"), from PIE root *sniegwh- "snow; to snow" (source also of Greek nipha, Latin nix (genitive nivis), Old Irish snechta, Irish sneachd, Welsh nyf, Lithuanian sniegas, Old Prussian snaygis, Old Church Slavonic snegu, Russian snieg', Slovak sneh "snow"). The cognate in Sanskrit, snihyati, came to mean "he gets wet."
As slang for "cocaine" it is attested from 1914.
tire n.
late 15c., "iron plates forming a rim of a carriage wheel," probably from tire "equipment, dress, covering" (c. 1300), a shortened form of attire (n.). The notion is of the tire as the dressing of the wheel. The original spelling was tyre, which had shifted to tire in 17c.-18c., but since early 19c. tyre has been revived in Great Britain and become standard there. Rubber ones, for bicycles (later automobiles) are from 1877. A tire-iron originally was one of the iron plates; as a device for separating a tire from a wheel, by 1909.