# 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: /klaʊd/
* Audio (US):(file)
* Audio (UK):(file)
* Audio:(file)
* Rhymes: -aʊd

### Noun

cloud (plural clouds)
* (obsolete) A rock; boulder; a hill.
* A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air.
** 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.
* 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.
* Anything which makes things foggy or gloomy.
* (figurative) Anything unsubstantial.
* A dark spot on a lighter material or background.
* 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.
* 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.
* A telecom network (from their representation in engineering drawings)
* (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.
* (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.
* (slang) Crystal methamphetamine.
* A large, loosely-knitted headscarf worn by women.

#### Quotations

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

#### Hyponyms

* See also Thesaurus:cloud
* anvil cloud
* bongcloud
* brain cloud
* funnel cloud
* Magellanic Cloud
* mammatus cloud
* molecular cloud
* mushroom cloud
* Oort cloud
* point cloud
* rain cloud
* star cloud
* tag cloud
* thundercloud

#### Derived terms

* accessory cloud
* acloud
* banner cloud
* becloud
* blow a cloud
* brown cloud
* cap cloud
* cloud 9
* cloudage
* cloud bank
* cloud base
* cloudberry
* cloud bow
* cloud bread
* cloud-built
* cloudburst
* cloud burst
* cloud-burst
* cloudbust
* cloudbuster
* cloudbusting
* cloud canal
* cloud-capt
* cloudcapt
* cloud ceiling
* cloud chamber
* cloud chaser
* cloud chasing
* cloud computing
* cloud cover
* cloud cuckoo-land
* cloud cuckoo land
* cloud-cuckoo-land
* cloud deck
* cloud deer
* cloud ear
* cloud egg
* clouden
* clouder
* cloudery
* cloudfall
* cloud-first
* cloud forest
* cloudform
* cloudfree
* cloudful
* cloud genus
* cloud-headed
* cloud hole
* cloudification
* cloudify
* cloudiness
* cloudish
* cloud kitchen
* cloudland
* cloudless
* cloudlet
* cloudlike
* cloudline
* cloudling
* cloudly
* cloud mass
* cloud mining
* cloud-native
* cloud nine
* cloud number nine
* cloud of title
* cloudogram
* cloud on title
* cloud over
* Cloud Peak
* cloud point
* cloud rap
* cloud rat
* cloud-ridden
* cloudrunner
* cloudscape
* cloudscraper
* cloudseed
* cloud-seeding
* cloud seeding
* cloud slime
* cloud species
* cloudspotter
* cloudspotting
* cloud storage
* cloud street
* cloudtop
* cloud up
* cloudwash
* cloudwashed
* cloudwater
* cloudwise
* cloudy
* crest cloud
* dark cloud
* decloud
* discloud
* dustcloud
* electron cloud
* encloud
* every cloud has a silver lining
* every dark cloud has a silver lining
* fire cloud
* get off of someone's cloud
* have one's head in the clouds
* hole punch cloud
* intercloud
* intracloud
* iridescent cloud
* Kordylewski cloud
* label cloud
* Land of the Long White Cloud
* lenticular cloud
* mother-of-pearl cloud
* multicloud
* nacreous cloud
* old man yelling at a cloud
* old man yelling at cloud
* old man yells at cloud
* old-man-yells-at-cloud
* on cloud nine
* overcloud
* pink cloud syndrome
* polar stratospheric cloud
* raincloud
* recloud
* Red Cloud
* revision cloud
* roll cloud
* shelf cloud
* smokecloud
* snowcloud
* snow cloud
* standing cloud
* storm cloud
* storm-cloud
* stormcloud
* subcloud
* sub-cloud car
* supercloud
* thundercloud
* thunder cloud
* twain cloud
* uncloud
* under a cloud
* wall cloud
* White Cloud
* Wilson cloud
* wind-cloud
* word cloud
* zeppelins in a cloud
* zodiacal cloud

#### See also

* Appendix:English collective nouns

### Verb

cloud (third-person singular simple present clouds, present participle clouding, simple past and past participle clouded)
* (intransitive) To become foggy or gloomy, or obscured from sight.
    The glass clouds when you breathe on it.
* (transitive) To overspread or hide with a cloud or clouds.
    The sky is clouded.
* 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.
* (transitive) To make obscure.
    All this talk about human rights is clouding the real issue.
* (transitive) To make less acute or perceptive.
    Your emotions are clouding your judgement.
    The tears began to well up and cloud my vision.
* (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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]: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], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks.
* (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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:I would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken.
* (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[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, […], published 1717, →OCLC, canto IV:The nice conduct of a clouded cane
* (intransitive) To become marked, darkened or variegated in this way.

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### References

* ↑ Who Coined 'Cloud Computing'? Antonio Regalado, MIT Techonology Review, October 31, 2011

### Further reading

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

### Anagrams

* could, culdo-

## French
### Etymology

From English cloud, cloud computing.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /klawd/
* Audio:(file)

### Noun

cloud m (uncountable)
* (computing, Anglicism, with le) the cloud
    Synonym: le nuage — Quebec

#### 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: /kluːd/

### Noun

cloud (plural cloudes)
* A small elevation; a hill.
* A clod, lump, or boulder.
* A cloud (mass of water vapour) or similar.
* The sky (that which is above the ground).
* 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: /ˈklo.uð/

### Noun

cloüd m (genitive cloita)
* 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$^b$16
    Do chloud tra in dligid-sin, ro·gabad in-salm-so.To overthrow this view, then, this psalm was sung.

#### Inflection

* $^H$ = triggers aspiration
* $^L$ = triggers lenition
* $^N$ = triggers nasalization

#### Descendants

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

### Mutation

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

### Further reading

* Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “clód”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

## Spanish
### Noun

cloud m (plural clouds)
* (computing) cloud