wind

The word “wind” means the natural movement of air, especially a noticeable current outdoors. In plain terms, either moving air (noun, rhymes with "tinned"), or to turn/twist something, or knock someone breathless (verb, rhymes with "find").

“Wind” is pronounced WIHND (/ˈwɪnd/ in IPA).

Here is “wind” used in a sentence: “A strong wind knocked over several garden chairs.”

Depending on how it is used, “wind” can be a noun and a verb.

The word “wind” comes from Old English. The "moving air" noun and the "twist/turn" verb both trace to Old English, but they come from different roots that happened to end up spelled the same in modern English.

“Wind” is a very common word in modern English, usually learned at around the A1 level.

“Wind” has 4 distinct senses listed in this dictionary. The most common is: the natural movement of air, especially a noticeable current outdoors.

Wind is caused by differences in air pressure. The sun heats the Earth unevenly, so some air becomes warmer and lighter and rises, while cooler, denser air flows in to take its place. That moving air is wind, and the bigger the pressure difference between two areas, the stronger the wind blows.

Wind is the general term for any noticeable movement of air. A breeze is specifically a light, gentle wind that is pleasant rather than forceful. So every breeze is a wind, but a strong or blustery flow of air would be called a wind or a gale, never a breeze.

By strength, winds range from a light breeze through a brisk wind to a gale, storm, and hurricane, as ranked on the Beaufort scale. By pattern, there are steady global winds such as the trade winds and local winds like sea breezes. A brief, sudden burst of wind is called a gust.

Wind has two parts: speed and direction. Speed is measured with an anemometer, usually in miles or kilometres per hour or in knots, and described on the Beaufort scale from calm to hurricane. Direction is read from a wind vane and named for where the wind comes from, so a westerly blows from the west.