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cloud - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

cumulus clouds (noun sense 1)
network diagram clouds (noun sense 8)

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).

cloud (plural clouds)

  2. A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
    Hyponyms: see Thesaurus:cloud

    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 9:34:

      While he thus ſpake, there came a cloud, and ouerſhadowed them, ⁊ they feared, as they entred into the cloude.

    • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] 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.

    • 1898, Edward Frere Marriott, “Papers relating to India”, in Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee Appointed to Inquire Into the Indian Currency‎[1], No. 37. Memorandum by Captain Edward Frere Marriott. I.S.C., page 76:

      But in one part of the horizon a cloud lay, and the rulers of India were oppressed with a sense of coming disaster. This cloud had begun to form in 1873, and had been continually growing larger; it threw a shadow over gold-debtor nations, and shed a depressing influence over gold-using countries.

  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.

    • 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.

  10. (telecommunications) A telecom network (from their representation in engineering drawings).[1]
  12. (cloud 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.

    • 2018, James Bridle, The New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, Verso Books, →ISBN:

      […] the cloud could do this, it could do that. The cloud could be powerful and intelligent. It became a business buzzword and a selling point.

    • 2024 February 17, Tom Lamont, quoting Molly Crabapple, “‘Humanity’s remaining timeline? It looks more like five years than 50’: meet the neo-luddites warning of an AI apocalypse”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN:

      “But there’s no fucking cloud,” says Crabapple, “there’s other people’s computers. There are vast datacentres that are sucking up water and electricity and rare-earth metals, literally boiling up the planet […] ”

  13. (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.

  14. (slang) Crystal methamphetamine.
  15. A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.
  16. (Internet slang, humorous, endearing) A white cat.
    Coordinate term: void (“black cat”)
  17. (obsolete) A rock; boulder; a hill.

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.
    Synonyms: fog, gloom

    The glass clouds when you breathe on it.

  2. (transitive) To overspread or hide with a cloud or clouds.
    Synonym: becloud

    The sky is clouded.

  3. Of the breath, to become cloud; to turn into mist.
    Synonyms: fog, 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.
    Synonyms: becloud, bedarken, bedim, fog

    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.
    Synonyms: begloom, engloom
  7. (transitive) To blacken; to sully; to stain; to tarnish (reputation or character).
    Synonyms: besmirch, denigrate, stain; see also Thesaurus:defame
  8. (transitive) To mark with, or darken in, veins or sports; to variegate with colors.

    to cloud yarn

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

to become foggy or gloomy, to become obscured from sight

to make obscure (e.g. to cloud the issue)

Translations to be checked

  1. ^ Who Coined 'Cloud Computing'? Antonio Regalado, MIT Techonology Review, October 31, 2011

From English cloud, cloud computing.

cloud m (uncountable)

  1. (computing, Anglicism, with le) the cloud
    Synonym: le nuage — Quebec

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

cloud (plural cloudes or (Southern) clouden)

  1. A cloud (mass of water vapour).

    • c. 1395, John Wycliffe, John Purvey [et al.], transl., Bible (Wycliffite Bible (later version), MS Lich 10.)‎[3], published c. 1410, Luke 9:34, folio 32, verso; republished as Wycliffe's translation of the New Testament, Lichfield: Bill Endres, 2010:

      but while he ſpak þeſe þĩgis .· a cloude was maad / ⁊ ouerſchadewide hẽ / and þeı dꝛedden .· whãne þeı entriden ın to þe cloude

      But while he said these things, a cloud formed and overshadowed them, and they became scared as they walked into the cloud.
  2. The sky; the atmosphere.
  3. A small elevation; a hill.
  4. A clod, lump, or boulder.
  5. Something cloudy or which obscures or dims.

From clo- +‎ -ud.

  • IPA(key): /ˈklo.uð/
    • (Blasse) [ˈklo.uð]
    • (Griffith) [ˈklo.øð]

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. 56b16

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

      To overthrow this view, then, this psalm was sung.
Masculine u-stem
singular dual plural
nominative cloud — —
vocative cloud — —
accusative cloudN — —
genitive *clóthoH, cloitaH — —
dative cloudL — —

Initial mutations of a following adjective:

  • H = triggers aspiration
  • L = triggers lenition
  • N = triggers nasalization
Mutation of cloud
radical lenition nasalization
cloud chloud cloud
pronounced with /ɡ-/

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

  • IPA(key): /ˈklaud/ [ˈklau̯ð̞]
  • Rhymes: -aud
  • Syllabification: cloud

cloud m (plural clouds)

  1. (computing) cloud
    Synonym: nube