spindrift
nounEtymology
Borrowed from Scots spindrift; further etymology uncertain. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it is a variant of spoondrift (archaic), apparently due to the pronunciation of this word in southwestern Scotland, which is derived from spoon + drift (“mass of matter driven or forced onward together in a body, etc., especially by wind or water”); spoon is a variant of spoom (“to sail briskly with the wind astern, with or without sails hoisted”). However, this is doubted by the Scottish National Dictionary because spoondrift is attested later than spindrift and it seems unlikely that the Scots spelling would have superseded the English one, and because the early use of the Scots word in the form spenedrift by James Melville (1556–1614) is unlikely to have derived from spoondrift. The word was popularized in English from the late 19th century by its use in the novels of the Scottish-born author William Black (1841–1898): see, for example, the 1878 quotation.
- borrowed from spindrift
Definitions
Sea spray (clouds of water droplets) blown from the tops of waves by the wind and whipped…
Sea spray (clouds of water droplets) blown from the tops of waves by the wind and whipped along the surface of the sea.
- There was no snow as yet up here at Dare; but wild tempests shaking the house to its foundations; and brief gleams of stormy sunlight lighting up the grey spindrift as it was whirled shorewards from the breaking seas; […]
- The ocean waves are broken up by wind, ultimately producing the storm-wrack and spin-drift of the tempest-tossed sea.
- [T]ogether they watched the bobbing black specks as they crawled out of the estuary into the grey spindrift which marked the harbour mouth.
Clouds of sand, snow, etc., whipped along the ground by the wind.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for spindrift. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA