cloud

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A mass of water droplets floating in the sky, often grey or white.

   Dark clouds gathered before the storm.

2. 2
   verb

   To make something harder to see or understand.

   Strong emotions can cloud your judgement.

3. 3
   noun

   Something that causes worry or sadness.

   The only cloud on the horizon was the threat of bad weather.

4. 4
   verb

   To make a face or mood gloomy.

   Their faces clouded with sadness at the news.

Multiword verbs with cloud

• cloud over Phrasal verb A2

  to fill with cloud until little or no clear sky remains

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Cloud is an Old English word that first meant a mass of rock or earth and is probably related to clot. Around the end of the 13th century it developed its modern atmospheric sense, apparently because a mass of condensed vapor resembled a mass of rock in shape.

From 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 Mi…

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External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary