cloud

English

Etymology

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 Middle English wolken, from Old English wolcn (whence Modern English welkin), the commonest Germanic word (compare Dutch wolk, German Wolke).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: kloud, IPA^(key): /klaʊd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊd

Noun

cloud (plural clouds)

1. (obsolete) A rock; boulder; a hill.
2. A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
   • 1908, W B M Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     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 little clouds, it in truth looked a dear little city; the city of one's dreams.

3. Any mass of dust, steam or smoke resembling such a mass.
   • 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:

     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.

4. Anything which makes things foggy or gloomy.
5. (figurative) Anything unsubstantial.
6. A dark spot on a lighter material or background.
7. A group or swarm, especially suspended above the ground or flying.

   He opened the door and was greeted by a cloud of bats.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Hebrews 12:1:

     so great a cloud of witnesses

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World , London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     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 this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it with insect life.

8. 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.

9. A telecom network (from their representation in engineering drawings)
10. (computing, with "the") The Internet, regarded as an abstract amorphous omnipresent space for processing and storage, the focus of cloud computing.
    • 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama's once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18:

      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.

11. (figuratively) A negative or foreboding aspect of something positive: see every cloud has a silver lining or every silver lining has a cloud.
    • 1798, Eleanor Sleath, The Orphan of the Rhine:

      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 and of anger.

    • 2011 January 25, Phil McNulty, “Blackpool 2-3 Man Utd”, in BBC:

      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.

12. (slang) Crystal methamphetamine.
13. A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:cloud.

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:cloud

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:English collective nouns

Verb

cloud (third-person singular simple present clouds, present participle clouding, simple past and past participle clouded)

1. (intransitive) To become foggy or gloomy, or 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. Of the breath, to become cloud; to turn into mist.
   • 1972, “Thick As A Brick”, Ian Anderson (lyrics), performed by Jethro Tull:

     The horses stamping
     Their warm breath clouding
     In the sharp and frosty morning
     Of the day.

4. (transitive) To make obscure.

   All this talk about human rights is clouding the real issue.

5. (transitive) To make less acute or perceptive.

   Your emotions are clouding your judgement.

   The tears began to well up and cloud my vision.

6. (transitive) To make gloomy or sullen.
   • 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The life and death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,
     Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book V”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC:

     Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks.

7. (transitive) To blacken; to sully; to stain; to tarnish (reputation or character).
   • c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     I would not be a stander-by to hear
     My sovereign mistress clouded so, without
     My present vengeance taken.

8. (transitive) To mark with, or darken in, veins or sports; to variegate with colors.

   to cloud yarn

   • 1714, Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”, in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, volume I, London: W Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, , published 1717, →OCLC, canto IV:

     The nice conduct of a clouded cane

9. (intransitive) To become marked, darkened or variegated in this way.

Translations

References

Further reading

• cloud on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Category:clouds on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Anagrams

• could, culdo-

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /klawd/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

cloud m (uncountable)

1. (computing, Anglicism, with le) the cloud

   Synonym: le nuage

See also

• informatique en nuage
• infonuagique

Middle English

Alternative forms

• clowd, cloude, clowde, clud, clude

Etymology

From Old English clūd, from Proto-West Germanic *klūt, from Proto-Germanic *klūtaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kluːd/

Noun

cloud (plural cloudes)

1. A small elevation; a hill.
2. A clod, lump, or boulder.
3. A cloud (mass of water vapour) or similar.
4. The sky (that which is above the ground).
5. That which obscures, dims, or clouds.

Related terms

• cloudy

Descendants

• English: cloud
• Scots: clud, clood

References

• “clǒud, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.

Old Irish

Etymology

From clo- +‎ -ud.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈklo.uð/

Noun

cloüd m (genitive cloita)

1. verbal noun of cloïd: subduing
   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 56^b16

     Do chloud tra in dligid-sin, ro·gabad in-salm-so.

     To overthrow this view, then, this psalm was sung.

Inflection

Descendants

• Middle Irish: clód
  • Irish: cló
  • Scottish Gaelic: clòthadh

Mutation

Further reading

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “clód”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Spanish

Noun

cloud m (plural clouds)

1. (computing) cloud