weather

English

Etymology

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”).

Cognates

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”).

Pronunciation

Noun

weather (countable and uncountable, plural weathers)

  1. 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.
  2. Unpleasant or destructive atmospheric conditions, and their effects.
    Wooden garden furniture must be well oiled as it is continuously exposed to weather.
  3. (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 57395299:
      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.
  4. (countable, figuratively) A situation.
  5. (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 403869432:
      What gusts of weather from that gathering cloud / My thoughts presage!
  6. (obsolete) A light shower of rain.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Wyclif to this entry?)

Synonyms

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Translations
situation — see situation
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Adjective

weather (not comparable)

  1. (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 57395299, 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.”

Synonyms

Antonyms

Verb

weather (third-person singular simple present weathers, present participle weathering, simple past and past participle weathered)

  1. To expose to the weather, or show the effects of such exposure, or to withstand such effects.
  2. (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 978271908, 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.
  3. To break down, of rocks and other materials, under the effects of exposure to rain, sunlight, temperature, and air.
  4. (nautical) To pass to windward in a vessel, especially to beat 'round.
    to weather a cape    to weather another ship
  5. (nautical) To endure or survive an event or action without undue damage.
    Joshua weathered a collision with a freighter near South Africa.
  6. (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 terms

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Further reading

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