Word.ws English Dictionary

gales

gales is the plural of gale.

Meaning of gale

Noun (1)

gale (plural gales)

  1. A very strong wind, more than a breeze, less than a storm; number 7 through to 9 winds on the 12-step Beaufort scale.
    • It's blowing a gale outside.
  2. An outburst, especially of laughter.
    • a gale of laughter
  3. (archaic, literary) A light breeze.
    • A little gale will soon disperse that cloud.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...

Noun (2)

gale

  1. A shrub, also called sweet gale or bog myrtle (Myrica gale), that grows on moors and fens.

Noun (3)

gale (plural gales)

  1. (archaic) A periodic payment, such as is made of a rent or annuity.
    • Gale day - the day on which rent or interest is due.
  2. The personal mining plot of a freeminer.
    • As a rule the free miners do not work their own 'gales,' but dispose of them to capitalists.1875, The Sanitary Record, volume 3, page 384

See all 16 meanings of gale

Phrases with gales

Questions about gales

What is gales the plural of?
Gales is the plural of gale.

Words near gales in the dictionary

  1. galerite
  2. galerites
  3. galero
  4. galerucine
  5. galerucines
  6. gales
  7. Gales Ferry
  8. galesaurid
  9. galesaurids
  10. Galesburg
  11. Galesville

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gales (page history and authors); gale (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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Cite this entry: “gales.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gales. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.