English Dictionary

WINDY (windier, windiest)

Pronunciation (US): Play  (GB): Play

IPA (US): 

Irregular inflected forms: windier  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation, windiest  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation

 Dictionary entry overview: What does windy mean? 

WINDY (adjective)
  The adjective WINDY has 4 senses:

1. abounding in or exposed to the wind or breezesplay

2. not practical or realizable; speculativeplay

3. resembling the wind in speed, force, or variabilityplay

4. using or containing too many wordsplay

  Familiarity information: WINDY used as an adjective is uncommon.


 Dictionary entry details 


WINDY (adjective)

 Declension: comparative and superlative 
Comparative: windier  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation
Superlative: windiest  Listen to US pronunciation  Listen to GB pronunciation


Sense 1

Meaning:

Abounding in or exposed to the wind or breezes

Synonyms:

blowy; breezy; windy

Context example:

a windy bluff

Similar:

stormy ((especially of weather) affected or characterized by storms or commotion)

Derivation:

wind (air moving (sometimes with considerable force) from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure)

windiness (a mildly windy state of the air)


Sense 2

Meaning:

Not practical or realizable; speculative

Synonyms:

airy; impractical; Laputan; visionary; windy

Context example:

visionary schemes for getting rich

Similar:

utopian (characterized by or aspiring to impracticable perfection)


Sense 3

Meaning:

Resembling the wind in speed, force, or variability

Context example:

a windy dash home

Similar:

fast (acting or moving or capable of acting or moving quickly)

Derivation:

wind (air moving (sometimes with considerable force) from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure)


Sense 4

Meaning:

Using or containing too many words

Synonyms:

long-winded; tedious; verbose; windy; wordy

Context example:

proceedings were delayed by wordy disputes

Similar:

prolix (tediously prolonged or tending to speak or write at great length)

Derivation:

wind (empty rhetoric or insincere or exaggerated talk)

windiness (boring verbosity)


 Context examples 


The red cores of the green bubbles are made of warm dust that has not yet been pushed away from the windy stars.

(Citizen Scientists Discover Yellow "Space Balls", NASA)

It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland, brightened up my hopes a little.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

It was main hot, and the windy was open, and I hear that old song comin' out as clear as clear—and the death-haul on the man already.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in the year 1892.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In a little time, I observed the noise and flutter of wings to increase very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, like a sign in a windy day.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The swish of them was enough to set him a-bristle with suspicion, and on a windy day she could not approach him at all.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

However, as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Knightley too, to take care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Across all the years how clearly I can see that spring day, with the green English fields, the windy English sky, and the yellow, beetle-browed cottage in which I had grown from a child to a man.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In the old monastic days he remembered to have heard such a sound when he had walked out one windy night at Bucklershard, and had listened to the long waves breaking upon the shingly shore.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day service at the new church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"Don't have too many irons in the fire." (English proverb)

"The truth prevails like oil over water." (Albanian proverb)

"Actions speak louder than words." (Arabic proverb)

"He who kills with bullets will die by bullets." (Corsican proverb)



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