Weather

How to spell weather

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce weather

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does weather mean?

1. nounThe state of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, including temperature, rainfall, wind, and sunshine.

Weather in a sentence

• What's the weather like today?

• The weather forecast predicts rain.

• We had glorious weather on holiday.

• Cold weather makes me hungry.

• Sailors keep a close eye on the weather.

Where does weather come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English weder, meaning the state of the air or sky, which traces back to a Proto-Germanic form wedram and ultimately to a root meaning 'wind' or 'blow'. Its Germanic cousins survive in the Dutch weer and the German Wetter, all naming the same everyday business of sun, rain, and storm. The middle consonant softened over the centuries, and by Middle English the spelling had shifted toward 'weather' with the th replacing the older d, which is why the modern word looks nothing like its blunt ancestor weder. The chief spelling trap is the silent a after the e and the easy confusion with the unrelated verb 'whether', which sounds nearly identical but governs choices rather than skies. Keeping the 'eat' buried inside w-EAT-her is one reliable way to fix the order of those vowels.

How the word is built

• Noun: atmospheric conditions.

Words that sound like weather

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• whether: A conjunction introducing a choice between alternatives or expressing a doubt or question.