Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adverb & adjective On or toward the side to which the wind is blowing.
- noun The lee side or quarter.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Toward the lee, or that part toward which the wind blows: opposed to windward.
- Pertaining to the quarter toward which the wind blows; being in the direction of the wind: opposed to windward: as, a leeward course.
- noun The point or direction opposite to that from which the wind blows: as, to fall to leeward.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Naut.) Pertaining to, or in the direction of, the part or side toward which the wind blows; -- opposed to
windward
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Away from the direction from which the
wind is blowing.Downwind . - adverb Away from the direction from which the wind is blowing.
Downwind .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the direction in which the wind is blowing
- adverb toward the wind
- adjective on the side away from the wind
- noun the side of something that is sheltered from the wind
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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What you imagined to be a sailing vessel is that dark cloud there, coming up from the leeward, which is fast shutting out the horizon from view.
The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea Henry [Illustrator] Austin
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We are housed on the "leeward" side of the base -- a boat ride from the Cuban mainland where the detainees are imprisoned and the military commissions take place.
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Kailua-Kona, which means "leeward" in Hawaiian, is on the sunny west coast of Hawaii's Big
Luxist 2010
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Yet it never occurred to me that the wonderful and technically correct marines hanging on his walls were due to anything but the artist's conscientious study of his subject, and only his casual mispronounciation of the word "leeward," which landsmen pronounce as spelled, but which rolls off the tongue of a sailor, be he former dock rat or naval officer, as "looward," and his giving the long sounds to the vowels of the words "patent" and "tackle," that induced me to ask if he had ever been to sea.
The Grain Ship Morgan Robertson 1888
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"But this is too long a falling to 'leeward' of our story, as the sailors would call it; so we will come right back into the wind again.
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Something about winds and not being on the leeward side of that huge body of water.
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Something about winds and not being on the leeward side of that huge body of water.
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Something about winds and not being on the leeward side of that huge body of water.
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Something about winds and not being on the leeward side of that huge body of water.
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Something about winds and not being on the leeward side of that huge body of water.
bilby commented on the word leeward
Lee's magnetic personality attracts just about everything.
September 5, 2008
bilby commented on the word leeward
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
- TS Eliot, 'The Wasteland'.
July 22, 2009