Word.ws English Dictionary

wintertide

Syllables: win·ter·tideUK/ˈwɪntə(ɹ)taɪd/US/ˈwɪntɚtaɪd/

wintertide noun: wintertime.

wintertide: wintertime
Image: This file is from the Mechanical Curator collection, a set, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

wintertide (plural wintertides)

  1. (archaic, literary) wintertime
    • Shut out the flower-time, / Sunbeam and shower-time; / Make way for our time, / The winter-tide.1867 February 16, Algernon C[harles] Swinburne, “Child's Song in Winter”, in Eliakim Littell, editor, Littell's Living Age, volume IV, number 46 (4th series; volume XCII, number 1185, from the...
    • O winter tide, O winter tide, / Thy coming brings us sadness; / Afar are those we hold most dear, / Here men are strange, and skies are drear; […]1891, Robert S. Littell, editor, Littell's Living Age, volume CLXXXVIII, Boston, Mass.: T. H. Carter & Company, →OCLC, page 194

Examples of wintertide in a sentence

  • Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring / Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers / Comes autumn with his apples scattering; / Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.1936, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “Diffugere Nives [translation of Horace, Odes, IV.vii]”, in More Poems, London: Jonathan Cape, →OCLC, V...
  • Its wintertide equivalence was eventually introduced in 1924.2014 February 6, “Sochi 2014: A Nottingham skater's ice dream”, in Impact: The University of Nottingham's Official Student Magazine...
  • So, grab yourself a spot of tea or a boozy hot chocolate, and celebrate the beginning of winter with these wintertide-inspired quotes.2014 December 18, Emily Kelley, “14 winter quotes to make the freezing cold weather seem a little less terrible”, in Bustle:

Forms of wintertide

pluralwintertides

Origin of wintertide

From Middle English wintertid, wyntertyde, from Old English winter + tid (“time”). By surface analysis, winter + -tide. Cognate to Dutch wintertijd (“winter time”).

Questions about wintertide

What does wintertide mean?
Wintertide means wintertime.
How do you use wintertide in a sentence?
Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring / Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers / Comes autumn with his apples scattering; / Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.
What part of speech is wintertide?
Wintertide is a noun.
How do you pronounce wintertide?
Wintertide is pronounced /ˈwɪntə(ɹ)taɪd/ (UK).
What is the plural of wintertide?
The plural of wintertide is wintertides.

Words near wintertide in the dictionary

  1. Wintersteins
  2. wintersweet
  3. wintersweets
  4. Winterswijk
  5. Winterthur
  6. wintertide
  7. wintertides
  8. wintertime
  9. wintertimes
  10. Winterton
  11. Winterton-on-Sea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wintertide (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:

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

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