weather

Syllables: wea·therUK/ˈwɛðə//ˈwɛðɚ/

weather noun: the short-term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, including the temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind, etc.

Noun

weather (countable and uncountable, plural weathers)

The short-term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, including the temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind, etc.
- What's the weather like today?
- We'll go for a walk when the weather's better.
Unpleasant or destructive atmospheric conditions, and their effects.
- Wooden garden furniture must be well oiled as it is continuously exposed to weather.
The direction from which the wind is blowing; used attributively to indicate the windward side.
- 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...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
Synonyms:

weatherboard
(countable, figuratively) A situation.
(obsolete) A storm; a tempest.
- 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, […], →OCLC
A light shower of rain.

Adjective

weather (not comparable)

Facing towards the flow of a fluid, usually air.
- weather side, weather helm
- 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...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, page 174
Synonyms:

windward

Verb

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

To expose to the weather, or show the effects of such exposure, or to withstand such effects.
- 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, →OCLC, stanza 42
(broadly) To sustain the trying effect of; to bear up against and overcome; to endure; to resist.
- "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.] w:The Wreck of the Hesperus.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 8, page...
- April 18, 1850, Frederick William Robertson, An Address Delivered to the Members of the Working Man's Institute
  You will weather the difficulties yet.
To break down, of rocks and other materials, under the effects of exposure to rain, sunlight, temperature, and air.
To cause (rocks) to break down by crushing, grinding, and/or dissolving with acids.
- 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
To pass to windward in a vessel, especially to beat 'round.
- to weather a cape to weather another ship
To endure or survive an event or action without undue damage.
- Joshua weathered a collision with a freighter near South Africa.
To place (a hawk) unhooded in the open air.
- 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
To rain; to storm.
- But there's no law against taking pictures when it's weathering out there, and you're likely to produce some beautiful, if not different, images for your efforts. All that's needed is to dress your camera for the weather[…]1982, Fredrik D. Bodin, How to Get the Best Travel Photographs

weather meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

weather in Hindi

state of the atmosphere: मौसम mausam, ऋतु ŕtu

weather in Tamil

state of the atmosphere: வானிலை vāṉilai

weather in Marathi

state of the atmosphere: हवामान havāmān

weather in Urdu

state of the atmosphere: مَوسَم mausam

More languagesFewer languages

weather in Bengali: আবহ aboho, আবহাওয়া abohaōẇa
weather in Telugu: కాలము kālamu
weather in Malayalam: അന്തരീക്ഷസ്ഥിതി antarīkṣasthiti
weather in Kannada: ವಾತಾವರಣ vātāvaraṇa
weather in Punjabi: ਮੌਸਮ mausam
weather in Gujarati: મોસમ mosam
weather in Odia: ମରସୁମ୍ marasum, ମରସୁମୀ marasumi
weather in Sanskrit: समा samā
weather in Sinhala: කාලගුණය kālaguṇaya
weather in Assamese: বতৰ botor
weather in Nepali: मौसम mausam
weather in Pashto: هوا hawā
weather in Tagalog: panahon, klima, weder
weather in Arabic: طَقْس ṭaqs, جَوّ jaww
weather in Malay: cuaca, hawa
weather in Indonesian: cuaca, hawa
weather in Thai: อากาศ aa-gàat, สภาพอากาศ sà-pâap-aa-gàat, ภูมิอากาศ puu-mí-aa-gàat
weather in Vietnamese: thời tiết
weather in Myanmar: ဥတု u.tu., ရာသီဥတု rasiu.tu.
Dhivehi: މޫސުން mūsun̊

Examples of weather in a sentence

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.
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...
Some observers have contrasted China with the US, whose economy has weathered the post-Covid recovery better.2023 November 15, Tessa Wong, “Xi Jinping arrives in US as his Chinese Dream sputters”, in BBC:

All 40 example sentences with weather

Synonyms of weather

weatherboard
windward
state of the atmosphere

Antonyms

Forms of weather

Noun
plural	weathers
Verb
third-person singular present	weathers
present participle	weathering
past participle	weathered
past	weathered

Past tense of weather: weathered

Plural of weather: weathers

Origin of weather

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 Scots wather (“weather”), Saterland Frisian Weeder (“weather”), Cimbrian bèttar (“weather”), Dutch weder, weer (“weather”), German Wetter (“weather”), Low German Weder (“weather”), Luxembourgish Wieder (“weather”), Yiddish וועטער (veter, “weather”), Danish vejr (“weather”), Faroese, Icelandic veður (“weather”), Norwegian Bokmål vær (“weather”), Norwegian Nynorsk veder, vêr (“weather”), Swedish väder (“weather”); 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”).

Words formed from weather

Phrases with weather

79 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with weather

Questions about weather

What does weather mean?: Weather means the short-term state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place, including the temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind, etc.
What is weather in Hindi?: Weather in Hindi is मौसम (mausam), ऋतु (ŕtu). See Weather meaning in Hindi.
How do you use weather in a sentence?: The garden party was called off due to bad weather.
What part of speech is weather?: Weather can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
How do you pronounce weather?: Weather is pronounced /ˈwɛðə/ (UK).
What is the plural of weather?: The plural of weather is weathers.

Words near weather in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: weather (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-weather.ogg.

Cite this entry: “weather.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/weather. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.