''leeward'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''leeward'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260305143651-00-⌔

leeward - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

leeward (comparative more leeward, superlativemost leeward or leewardmost)

• On the side sheltered from the wind; in that direction.

Adverb

leeward (comparative more leeward, superlative most leeward)

• Away from the direction from which the wind is blowing; downwind.
  • ✤ Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb—one engaged forward and the other aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.¹
  • ✤ No lady goat is safe from criminal assault, even on the Sabbath Day, when there is a genteman goat within three miles to leeward of her and nothing in the way but a fence fourteen feet high […]**²

Etymology

From lee (“side away from the wind”) + -ward (“direction”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈliːwəd/, (nautical)/ˈl(j)uːəd/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (General American) IPA: /ˈliwɚd/, (nautical)/ˈluːɚd/
  • Audio (Texas): 🔊
• Rhymes: -iːwə(ɹ)d

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 23, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: ↩

2. ca. 1909, Mark Twain, ;;Letters from the Earth Letter VIII** : ↩

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