Library / English Dictionary

WINTER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

The coldest season of the year; in the northern hemisphere it extends from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox

Synonyms:

winter; wintertime

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Hypernyms ("winter" is a kind of...):

season; time of year (one of the natural periods into which the year is divided by the equinoxes and solstices or atmospheric conditions)

Meronyms (parts of "winter"):

winter solstice (December 22, when the sun is at its southernmost point)

midwinter (the middle of winter)

Derivation:

winter (spend the winter)

winterize (prepare for winter)

wintery; wintry (characteristic of or occurring in winter)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Spend the winter

Example:

Shackleton's men overwintered on Elephant Island

Synonyms:

overwinter; winter

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Hypernyms (to "winter" is one way to...):

pass; spend (use up a period of time in a specific way)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

winter (the coldest season of the year; in the northern hemisphere it extends from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox)

Credits

 Context examples: 

I was out with the Belvoir last winter.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I spent the winter in this manner.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Since the beginning of the winter they had travelled eighteen hundred miles, dragging sleds the whole weary distance; and eighteen hundred miles will tell upon life of the toughest.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It is cold, cold; so cold that the grey heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the ground is hardening to receive it.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

We planned to come home with the Carrols, a month or more ago, but they suddenly changed their minds, and decided to pass another winter in Paris.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Three smaller windows on the right-hand side filled the apartment with cold winter sunshine.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Athletes can also use the device to assess and monitor their performance in various winter sports.

(Nanogenerator Creates Electricity from Snowfall, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

This carbon uptake is restrained during winter, but increases to peak capacity in spring when snowmelt provides abundant water to trees.

(Earlier snowmelt decreases streamflow, reduces forests' ability to regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide, NSF)

The scientists' analysis reveals that when the surface ocean is especially salty, as it was throughout 2016, strong winter storms can set off an overturning circulation.

(Data from robotic drifters explain mysterious holes in Antarctic sea ice, National Science Foundation)

Mills and team point out that the areas with co-existing winter brown and winter white animals would be places with special potential for evolutionary rescue, where genetically driven adaptive traits reverse population decline.

(Twenty-one species adapted to disappear in the snow. Then, the snow disappeared, National Science Foundation)