foen

Noun

foehn (plural foehns)

1. A warm dry wind blowing down the north sides of the Alps, especially in Switzerland.
   • The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights.1971, WW Kibler, translating Gian Fontana, ‘The Mayor of Valdei’, in Bezzola (ed.), The Curly-Horned Cow, Peter Owen 1971, p. 71
2. A similar katabatic wind developing on the lee side of a mountain.
   • The foehn, I learned, was first recorded in the Alps but is found all over the world. The Santa Anas contain the occasional foehn, nicknamed “murder winds” and immortalized in Joan Didion's 1965 essay “Los Angeles Notebook"2011, Claire Dederer, Poser: A Mother's Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, Bloomsbury, page 261