against the wind
7
3.7
- idiom
:
contra el viento
- Joshua turned back to his watch, squinting his eyes against the wind.
- braced against the wind
- hunched against the wind
- sail against the wind
I think it's John Ford who said or Henry Ford who said airplanes take off against the wind, not with it.
- I think it's John Ford who said or Henry Ford who said airplanes take off against the wind, not with it.
- Years each tiny lesson, the way seagulls seem to fly at times against the wind and into the clouds.
Examples
-
She leaned into the gusts, determined to walk against the wind as she headed home.
-
There were guy wires holding it in place against the wind.
Fiction book (1992) -
The return trip the next day was a harder pull against the wind with a few showers of rain.
Academic text (1997) -
They're all going against the wind.
-
And then I imagined him sailing his boat directly against the wind somewhere near his house in San Francisco.
Fiction book (2001) -
We braced ourselves against the wind and looked above us.
Fiction book (1996) -
We both wore cotton turbans around our heads to protect against the wind and dust.
Academic text (2002) -
From the window, I watch my sister, bent against the wind, kneeling in that pose I know so well.
Fiction book (1997) -
The children struggled to fly their kites against the wind on the beach.
-
The cyclist pedaled hard against the wind, making slow progress up the hill.
Synonyms
10
3.9
Toward the wind that is blowing at you
1
3.5
In the direction the wind comes from
Toward the direction the wind comes from
In the direction the wind is blowing
How Upwind
10
3.9
7
3.7
1
4.2
- Specialized
6
5.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'against' (opposite to) with 'wind' (moving air), yielding the literal sense 'in a direction opposite to the wind'. This is a straightforward, compositional preposition + noun phrase found across languages (e.g., Spanish 'contra el viento'), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily understand it.
Etymology
The phrase against the wind starts with a clear picture: a person or boat moving while the wind blows toward them, so they go against the flow. Moving against the wind is harder, so the phrase means 'in a direction opposite to the wind' and often 'with difficulty'.