Word.ws English Dictionary

Buys Ballot's law

Buys Ballot's law proper noun: a rule stating that, in the Northern Hemisphere, if a person stands with their back to the wind, the atmospheric pressure is low to the left and high to the right (because wind travels counterclockwise around low-pressure zones in the Northern Hemisphere).

Proper noun

Buys Ballot's law

  1. A rule stating that, in the Northern Hemisphere, if a person stands with their back to the wind, the atmospheric pressure is low to the left and high to the right (because wind travels counterclockwise around low-pressure zones in the Northern Hemisphere).

Origin of Buys Ballot's law

Named after C. H. D. Buys Ballot, Dutch meteorologist.

Questions about Buys Ballot's law

What does Buys Ballot's law mean?
Buys Ballot's law means a rule stating that, in the Northern Hemisphere, if a person stands with their back to the wind, the atmospheric pressure is low to the left and high to the right (because wind travels counterclockwise around low-pressure zones in the Northern Hemisphere).
What part of speech is Buys Ballot's law?
Buys Ballot's law is a proper noun.

Words near Buys Ballot's law in the dictionary

  1. buys
  2. buys a dog and barks oneself
  3. buys a pup
  4. buys a ticket to
  5. buys back
  6. Buys Ballot's law
  7. buys down
  8. buys in
  9. buys into
  10. buys it
  11. buys off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Buys Ballot's law (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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