Cloud

Pronunciation

• IPA: /klaÊŠd/
• Rhymes: -aÊŠd

Origin

From Middle English cloud, cloude, clod, clud, clude, from Old English clūd ("mass of stone, rock, boulder, hill"), from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz, *klutaz ("lump, mass, conglomeration"), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- ("to ball up, clench"). Cognate with Scots cloud, clud ("cloud"), Dutch kluit ("lump, mass, clod"), German Low German Kluut, Kluute ("lump, mass, ball"), German Kloß ("lump, dumpling, meatball"), Danish klode ("sphere, orb, planet"), Swedish klot ("sphere, orb, ball, globe"), Icelandic klót ("knob on a sword's hilt"). Related to clod, clot.

Full definition of cloud

Noun

1. (obsolete) A rock; boulder; a hill.
2. A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
• 2013-06-29, Unspontaneous combustion, 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 South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.
3. Any mass of dust, steam or smoke resembling such a mass.
4. Anything which makes things foggy or gloomy.
5. A group or swarm, especially suspended above the ground or flying.
• Bible, Heb. xii. 1so great a cloud of witnesses
6. He opened the door and was greeted by a cloud of bats.
7. 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.
8. (computing, with the) The Internet, regarded as an amorphous omnipresent space for processing and storage, the focus of cloud computing.
• 2013-06-14, Jonathan Freedland, Obama's once hip brand is now tainted, 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 stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.
9. (figuratively) A negative aspect of something positive: see every cloud has a silver lining or every silver lining has a cloud.
• 2011, January 25, Phil McNulty, Blackpool 2-3 Man Utd, 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.
10. (slang) Crystal methamphetamine.
11. A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Verb

1. (intransitive) To become foggy or gloomy, to become obscured from sight.The glass clouds when you breathe on it.
2. (transitive) To overspread or hide with a cloud or clouds.The sky is clouded.
3. (transitive) To make obscure.All this talk about human rights is clouding the real issue.
4. (transitive) To make gloomy or sullen.
• ShakespeareOne day too late, I fear me, noble lord,
  Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.
• MiltonBe not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks.
5. (transitive) To blacken; to sully; to stain; to tarnish (reputation or character).
• ShakespeareI would not be a stander-by to hear
  My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
  My present vengeance taken.
6. (transitive) To mark with, or darken in, veins or sports; to variegate with colours.to cloud yarn
• Alexander Popethe nice conduct of a clouded cane

Anagrams

• could