A snowclone is a recognizable and formulaic sentence frame that references a piece of popular and/or internet culture. The template is often used to comment upon any situation which expresses the sentiment of the original snowclone. It is not to be confused with languages like LOLSpeak, which have certain grammatical and content rules; rather, it is a more “direct verbal template” (Rintel, Crisis Memes). Snowclones are most often attached to an image macro, but will still be recognizable by the sentence structure if represented on a different image or with no image at all.
An example of this is “one does not simply” meme. The original is from the Lord of the Rings movie franchise (A), but the snowclone has been used for various other memes (B), recognizable from it’s “one does not simply {X}” structure. It still retains the sentiment of cynical expressions of impossibility, even when divorced from its iconic image macro (C).
According to multiple reports, the term was first coined by Glen Whitman on the blog Agoraphilia in 2004. Since then, the term has grown within internet scholarship, spawning its own site (http://snowclones.org/) which collects snowclones from around the web.
Citations:
Rintel, Sean. “Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2 (2). <http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=202/>
Whitman, Glen. “Phrases for Lazy Writers in Kit Form Are the New Clichés.” Web log post.Agoraphilia. Blogspot, 14 Jan. 2004. Web. <http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2004_01_11_agoraphilia_archive.html#107412842921919301>.