weather
EnglishEdit
EtymologyEdit
From Middle English weder, wedir, from Old English weder, from Proto-West Germanic *wedr, from Proto-Germanic *wedrą, from Proto-Indo-European *wedʰrom (=*we-dʰrom), from *h₂weh₁- (“to blow”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Weeder, West Frisian waar, Dutch weer, Low German Weder, German Wetter, Danish vejr, Swedish väder, Norwegian Bokmål vær, Norwegian Nynorsk vêr, Icelandic veður; also more distantly related to Russian вёдро (vjódro, “fair weather”) and perhaps Albanian vrëndë (“light rain”).
Other cognates include Sanskrit निर्वाण (nirvāṇa, “blown or put out, extinguished”).
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈwɛð.ə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈwɛð.ɚ/
Audio (GA) (file) - Rhymes: -ɛðə(ɹ)
- Homophone: wether; whether (in accents with the wine-whine merger)
- Hyphenation: wea‧ther
NounEdit
weather (countable and uncountable, plural weathers)
- The short term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, including the temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind, etc.
- 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 118:
- Human beings love to talk about the weather.
- What's the weather like today?
- We'll go for a walk when the weather's better.
- The garden party was called off due to bad weather.
- Here and there, the weather on the sea allowed two of their friends to hear and see, too.
- Unpleasant or destructive atmospheric conditions, and their effects.
- Wooden garden furniture must be well oiled as it is continuously exposed to weather.
- (nautical) The direction from which the wind is blowing; used attributively to indicate the windward side.
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 3, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
- One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the weather side of an ice-island.
- (countable, figuratively) A situation.
- (obsolete) A storm; a tempest.
- 1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
- What gusts of weather from that gathering cloud / My thoughts presage!
- (obsolete) A light shower of rain.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Wyclif to this entry?)
SynonymsEdit
- (state of the atmosphere): meteorology
- (windward side): weatherboard
HyponymsEdit
Derived termsEdit
- all-weather
- fair-weather
- fair-weather friend
- how's the weather
- macroweather
- make the weather
- NWR
- NWS
- there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing
- under the weather
- unweather
- weather balloon
- weather bow
- weather chart
- weather deck
- weather eye
- weather forecast
- weather front
- weather gauge
- weather loach
- weather map
- weather pains
- weather report
- weather shore
- weather speak
- weather summary
- weather vane
- weather-beaten
- weather-bit
- weather-bound
- weather-wise
- weatherboard
- weatherbound
- weathercast
- weathercock
- weathergirl
- weatherise
- weatherish
- weatherize
- weatherly
- weatherman
- weatherperson
- weatherproof
- weatherstrip
- weatherwise
- weathery
- wet-weather
TranslationsEdit
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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AdjectiveEdit
weather (not comparable)
- (sailing, geology) Facing towards the flow of a fluid, usually air.
- weather side, weather helm
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 35, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 174:
- Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I—being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude—how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships’ standing orders, “Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time.”
SynonymsEdit
AntonymsEdit
VerbEdit
weather (third-person singular simple present weathers, present participle weathering, simple past and past participle weathered)
- To expose to the weather, or show the effects of such exposure, or to withstand such effects.
- 1856, Hugh Miller, The Cruise of the Betsey
- The organisms […] seem indestructible, while the hard matrix in which they are embedded has weathered from around them.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 42:
- [An eagle] soaring through his wide empire of the air / To weather his broad sails.
- 1856, Hugh Miller, The Cruise of the Betsey
- (by extension) To sustain the trying effect of; to bear up against and overcome; to endure; to resist.
- 1840 January 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[Ballads.] The Wreck of the Hesperus.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 8, page 44:
- "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, / And do not tremble so; / For I can weather the roughest gale, That ever wind did blow."
- April 18, 1850, Frederick William Robertson, An Address Delivered to the Members of the Working Man's Institute
- You will weather the difficulties yet.
- To break down, of rocks and other materials, under the effects of exposure to rain, sunlight, temperature, and air.
- (nautical) To pass to windward in a vessel, especially to beat 'round.
- to weather a cape to weather another ship
- (nautical) To endure or survive an event or action without undue damage.
- Joshua weathered a collision with a freighter near South Africa.
- (falconry) To place (a hawk) unhooded in the open air.
- 1773, James Campbell, A Treatise on modern faulconry:
- If your hawk is bad-weathered, that is, will not fit on your fist when the wind blows, but hales, and beats, and hangs by the jeſſes, ſhe has an ill habit of the worſt kind.
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
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Further readingEdit
- weather at OneLook Dictionary Search
- weather in Britannica Dictionary
- weather in Macmillan Collocations Dictionary
- weather in Sentence collocations by Cambridge Dictionary
- weather in Ozdic collocation dictionary
- weather in WordReference English Collocations