winterward

English

Alternative forms

• winterwards

Etymology

winter +‎ -ward

Adverb

winterward (comparative more winterward, superlative most winterward)

1. Toward winter.
   • 1876, Ella Farman Pratt, The Cooking Club of Tu-Whit Hollow, page 133:

     After the sunny week, when Nellie Crane had her custard pies, the weather turned a sharp corner — back winterward.

   • 1902, Alfred Henry Lewis, Peggy O'Neal, page 289:

     You may believe I went into November and looked winterward with a load off my soul, when now the General's health was come back; and with it his temper to wrangle and clash with me.

   • 2002, Anne Ursu, Spilling Clarence: A Novel, page 75:

     Fall is simply a direction, like west; fall is when things move winterward.

   • 2013, Franz Wright, Kindertotenwald, page 48:

     Before they do, though, this time I want one of them to tell me who was in charge of tracking my brother's swift progress sleepward and ever more winterward, footprints suddenly come to an end, like an unfinished sentence in the diary of an elderly teenager working the night shift alone, held up at gunpoint and abruptly deceased, halfway across a black snowfield.

Adjective

winterward (comparative more winterward, superlative most winterward)

1. Approaching winter or during the approach of winter;
   • 1938, Frontiers - Volumes 3-4, page 3:

     One by one the summer resident birds depart; the migrants come through in a rush, the peak of each species' wave reached nearly in a week from the first one seen; the other or winterward side of the wave declines more slowly.

   • 1944, Victoria Lincoln, Grandmother and the Comet: An Insubstantial Pageant, page 115:

     Oh, dear God, how lovely this flower, this strange youngness is the last-born wilding of the winterward grass.

   • 1991, F. H. M. van de Ven, Hydrology for the Water Management of Large River Basins, page 177:

     The latter exhibit increased sensitivity to the temperature rise, associated with increases of winter runoff owing to snow melting and decreases of summer runoff owing to both a winterward shift of spring snowmelt runoff and an enhanced […]

2. Becoming wintry.
   • 1939, Rupert Hughes, Stately Timber, page 162:

     It had a dying sweetness, a funereal majesty, a winterward regret.

   • 1958, Contact - Issues 1-3:

     O anointed with dust, What dry in your throat makes barren your tongue This winterward moment my presence has sung?

   • 1997, Wendy Saloman, Syllables & leaves, page 105:

     You said the wind through the trees Named the winterward soul.

   • 2009, Martin E. Marty, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, page 150:

     The winterward heart moves to solstice with the stark sense that, tilted too far from its sun, it will chill.