Definition of "weather"

weather

/ˈwɛð.ə/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  Human beings love to talk about the weather.
  1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 118
2. Unpleasant or destructive atmospheric conditions, and their effects.
3. (nautical) The direction from which the wind is blowing; used attributively to indicate the windward side.
  Quotations
  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.
  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
4. (countable, figuratively) A situation.
5. (obsolete) A storm; a tempest.
  Quotations
  What gusts of weather from that gathering cloud / My thoughts presage!
  1697, Virgil, “(please specify the book number)”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]
6. (obsolete) A light shower of rain.
adjective
not comparable
1. (sailing, geology) Facing towards the flow of a fluid, usually air.
  Quotations
  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.”
  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, page 174
verb
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.
  Quotations
  The organisms […] seem indestructible, while the hard matrix in which they are embedded has weathered from around them.
  1856, Hugh Miller, The Cruise of the Betsey
  [An eagle] soaring through his wide empire of the air / To weather his broad sails.
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 42
2. (by extension) To sustain the trying effect of; to bear up against and overcome; to endure; to resist.
  Quotations
  "Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, / And do not tremble so; / For I can weather the roughest gale, That ever wind did blow."
  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, stanza 8, page 44
  You will weather the difficulties yet.
  April 18, 1850, Frederick William Robertson, An Address Delivered to the Members of the Working Man's Institute
  Some observers have contrasted China with the US, whose economy has weathered the post-Covid recovery better. Until recently, Americans may have feared the day China would overtake them as the world's largest economy, but now analysts doubt if this will happen.
  2023 November 15, Tessa Wong, “Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters”, in BBC‎
3. To break down, of rocks and other materials, under the effects of exposure to rain, sunlight, temperature, and air.
4. To cause (rocks) to break down by crushing, grinding, and/or dissolving with acids.
  Quotations
  Lichens' ability to weather makes them a geological force, yet they do more than disolve the physical features of the world.
  2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 85
5. (nautical) To pass to windward in a vessel, especially to beat 'round.
6. (nautical) To endure or survive an event or action without undue damage.
7. (falconry) To place (a hawk) unhooded in the open air.
  Quotations
  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.
  1773, James Campbell, A Treatise on modern faulconry

Definition of "weather"

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