Cloudy

How to spell cloudy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cloudy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cloudy mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with or full of clouds, so the sky is overcast.
2. adjectiveOf a liquid: not transparent, appearing murky or full of suspended particles.

Cloudy in a sentence

• The forecast warned that the afternoon would turn grey and cloudy.

• The tap water ran cloudy for a moment after the pipes were repaired.

• We packed an umbrella because the morning looked cloudy and damp.

• The bottle of unfiltered juice was naturally cloudy at the bottom.

Where does cloudy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English 'clud', which originally meant a mass of rock or a hill rather than anything in the sky. Speakers seem to have transferred that idea of a heavy, rounded lump to the great grey masses that gathered overhead, and by the medieval period 'cloud' had drifted firmly upward to mean the visible vapour we know today. The adjective form simply adds the native suffix '-y', meaning 'full of' or 'covered with', a pattern English uses freely in words like 'rainy' and 'misty'. From the sense of a sky full of clouds, the word also stretched to describe liquids that are murky or not clear, as in cloudy water or cloudy apple juice. Because both base and suffix are plain Germanic, the spelling is regular and the only thing to watch is that single internal 'd' followed by the 'y'.

How the word is built

• cloud (from Old English clud: rock, hill, then a rain mass)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of, characterised by)