Wiktionary

climate

English

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Etymology

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From Middle English climat, from Old French climat, from Latin clima, from Ancient Greek κλίμα (klíma, “latitude”, literally “inclination”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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climate (countable and uncountable, plural climates)

  1. The long-term manifestations of weather and other atmospheric conditions in a given area or country, now usually represented by the statistical summary of its weather conditions during a period long enough to ensure that representative values are obtained (generally 30 years).
    • 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns‎[1]:
      And the effects from climate change are already extreme.
  2. (figuratively) The context in general of a particular political, moral, etc., situation.
    Industries that require a lot of fossil fuels are unlikely to be popular in the current political climate.
    • 2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times‎[2]:
      In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial.
    • 2020 December 2, Philip Haigh, “A winter of discontent caused by threat of union action”, in Rail, page 63:
      This isn't the time for militant unionism. If I were at ScotRail, in the current climate I'd trade a pay freeze [sic: pay rise?] for job security.
  3. (obsolete) An area of the earth's surface between two parallels of latitude.
  4. (obsolete) A region of the Earth.

Derived terms

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Related terms

Translations

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Verb

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climate (third-person singular simple present climates, present participle climating, simple past and past participle climated)

  1. (poetic, obsolete) To dwell.

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Latin

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Noun

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climate

  1. ablative singular of clima
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