/klaʊd/
OriginFrom Middle English cloud, from Old English clūd (“mass of stone, rock, boulder, hill”), from Proto-West Germanic *klūt, from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz, *klutaz (“lump, mass, conglomeration”), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up, clench”).
Cognate with Scots clood, clud (“cloud”), Dutch kluit (“lump, mass, clod”), German Low German Kluut, Kluute (“lump, mass, ball”), German Kloß (“lump, ball, dumpling”), Danish klode (“sphere, orb, planet”), Swedish klot (“sphere, orb, ball, globe”), Icelandic klót (“knob on a sword's hilt”). Related to English clod, clot, clump, club. Largely replaced Middle English wolken, from Old English wolcn (whence Modern English welkin), the commonest Germanic word (compare Dutch wolk, German Wolke).
- obsoleteA rock; boulder; a hill.
- A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
“While he thus ſpake, there came a cloud, and ouerſhadowed them, ⁊ they feared, as they entred into the cloude.”
“So this was my future home, I thought![…]Backed by towering hills, the but faintly discernible purple line of the French boundary off to the southwest, a sky of palest Gobelin flecked with fat, fleecy”
- Any mass of dust, steam or smoke resembling such a mass.
“Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in Sout”
- Anything which makes things foggy or gloomy.
“But in one part of the horizon a cloud lay, and the rulers of India were oppressed with a sense of coming disaster. This cloud had begun to form in 1873, and had been continually growing larger; it th”
- figurativelyAnything unsubstantial.
- A dark spot on a lighter material or background.
- A group or swarm, especially suspended above the ground or flying.
“He opened the door and was greeted by a cloud of bats.”
“so great a cloud of witnesses”
“The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank thi”
- An elliptical shape or symbol whose outline is a series of semicircles, supposed to resemble a cloud.
“The comic-book character's thoughts appeared in a cloud above his head.”
- A telecom network (from their representation in engineering drawings).
- with-definite-articleThe Internet, regarded as an abstract amorphous omnipresent space for processing and storage, the focus of cloud computing.
“Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stu”
“[…]the cloud could do this, it could do that. The cloud could be powerful and intelligent. It became a business buzzword and a selling point.”
““But there’s no fucking cloud,” says Crabapple, “there’s other people’s computers. There are vast datacentres that are sucking up water and electricity and rare-earth metals, literally boiling up the ”
- figurativelyA negative or foreboding aspect of something positive: see every cloud has a silver lining or every silver lining has a cloud.
“But when he found that some of his interrogatories were evaded, and others answered undecisively, the look of gentleness which he had assumed, vanished, and his brow wore the cloud of disappointment a”
“The only cloud on their night was that injury to Rafael, who was followed off the pitch by his anxious brother Fabio as he was stretchered away down the tunnel.”
- slangCrystal methamphetamine.
- A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.
- Internet, endearing, humorousA white cat.
- intransitiveTo become foggy or gloomy, or obscured from sight.
“The glass clouds when you breathe on it.”
- transitiveTo overspread or hide with a cloud or clouds.
- Of the breath, to become cloud; to turn into mist.
“The horses stamping
Their warm breath clouding
In the sharp and frosty morning
Of the day.”
- transitiveTo make obscure.
“All this talk about human rights is clouding the real issue.”
- transitiveTo make less acute or perceptive.
“Your emotions are clouding your judgement.”
“The tears began to well up and cloud my vision.”
- transitiveTo make gloomy or sullen.
“One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,
Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.”
“Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks.”
- transitiveTo blacken; to sully; to stain; to tarnish (reputation or character).
“I would not be a stander-by to hear
My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
My present vengeance taken.”
- transitiveTo mark with, or darken in, veins or sports; to variegate with colors.
“to cloud yarn”
“The nice conduct of a clouded cane”
- intransitiveTo become marked, darkened or variegated in this way.
Formsclouds(plural) · cloude(alternative, Early, Modern) · clowd(alternative, Early, Modern) · clouds(present, singular, third-person) · clouding(participle, present) · clouded(participle, past) · clouded(past)
Source: Wiktionary