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westerly

westerly

1 3.1
In a westward direction
  • adverb
  • /ˈwɛstərli/
translation icon : hacia el oeste

Examples

  • Northwest winds are around five miles per hour, becoming westerly in the afternoon.

  • Sailing westerly from Jamaica would have put him in Central America.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • So, so we'll just say that's going to be, you know, at six miles here in the westerly direction, OK?

  • Norma said to take the warm westerly to the Iron Mountain.

  • We continued westerly, favored by good winds as before.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • Sixty miles westerly.

  • Although the wind at our position is westerly, it is part of a low-pressure system, which circulates in a clockwise direction in the Southern Hemisphere, unlike at home.

    Blog text (7)
  • We sailed westerly across the open sea, heading towards the setting sun.

  • The hikers traveled westerly along the trail to reach the coastal cliffs.

  • As the storm approached, the winds shifted westerly, indicating a change in weather.

Synonyms

west
vswesterly
442 1.0

Toward the side where the sun sets

often also describes coming from that sunset direction
westbound
vswesterly
9 2.8

Going toward the west

can instead indicate origin from the sunset side
due west
vswesterly
9 1.2

The direction straight to the west on a compass

is broader and can mean simply toward or from that side
westward
vswesterly
4 2.7

Moving toward the west

also means coming from the sunset side

Antonyms

1 1.0

Toward the east across land and sea

1 3.5

Moving from the east

Compounds

prevailing westerly
  • Specialized
1 6.1

A wind that usually blows from the west in regions with mild weather

Surface Forms

westerly positive

Morphology

westerly = west (transparent) = west + erly

The adverbial sense is a straightforward directional derivation from 'west' plus '-erly', so learners can map it to 'in a westward direction'.

Etymology

The word westerly comes from west and the ending -erly, and as an adverb it means 'in a westward direction' or 'from the west', so to go westerly is to move toward the west.