Word.ws English Dictionary

winds of change

winds of change noun: the inexorable process of inevitable societal and political change and progress over time.

Noun

winds of change pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The inexorable process of inevitable societal and political change and progress over time.

Origin of winds of change

Coined by UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1960 in a speech advocating decolonization made in Cape Town, South Africa, which referred to the "wind of change […] blowing through this continent", later shifting to the plural "winds of change" in popular usage.

Questions about winds of change

What does winds of change mean?
Winds of change means the inexorable process of inevitable societal and political change and progress over time.
What part of speech is winds of change?
Winds of change is a noun.

Words near winds of change in the dictionary

  1. winds
  2. winds around one's little finger
  3. winds back
  4. winds back the clock
  5. winds down
  6. winds of change
  7. winds off
  8. winds one's neck in
  9. winds up
  10. winds up one's bottoms
  11. windsail

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: winds of change (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: “winds of change.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/winds_of_change. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.