Foehn

//fɝn// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A warm dry wind blowing down the north sides of the Alps, especially in Switzerland.

    "The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights."

  2. 2
    a warm dry wind that blows down the northern slopes of the Alps wordnet
  3. 3
    A similar katabatic wind developing on the lee side of a mountain.

    "The foehn, I learned, was first recorded in the Alps but is found all over the world. The Santa Anas contain the occasional foehn, nicknamed “murder winds” and immortalized in Joan Didion's 1965 essay “Los Angeles Notebook""

Synonyms

All synonyms
fohnfohnsamielsirocco

Example

More examples

"The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights."

Etymology

Borrowed from German Föhn, from Old High German phonno, from Vulgar Latin faōnius, an alteration of Latin favōnius (“west wind”), from Favōnius (“Roman wind god”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.