plum rains
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /plʌm ˈɹeɪnz/
rhymes: -eɪnz
Forms: form: plum rain
Etymology: From plum + rains, either:
* a calque of Japanese 梅雨 (ばいう, baiu, “East Asian rainy season”) (梅 (ばい, bai, “Japanese plum or apricot (Prunus mume)”) + 雨 (う, u, “rain; rainy weather”)), from Middle Chinese 梅雨 (mwoj hju^X), a poetic reference to the season when plums grow or ripen;
* a calque of Japanese 梅の雨 (うめのあめ, ume no ame, literally “plums’ rain”), from 梅 (うめ, ume) + の (no, possession marker) + 雨 (あめ, ame); or
* a calque of Mandarin 梅雨 (méiyǔ, “East Asian rainy season”) (see, for example, the 1894 and 1991 quotations), from 梅 (méi, “Prunus mume”) + 雨 (yǔ, “rain”).
Senses: examples: text: This week the rainy season appears fairly to have set in, and to have found the farmers but ill-prepared for the deluge. The wheat and barley crops were just ripe for the sickle, and in several instances had been cut, but not carried, when the "plum rains," as the Japanese call them, began.
ref: 1871 October, “Foreign Items”, in Samuel J[ones] Smith, editor, The Siam Repository. Containing a Summary of Asiatic Intelligence, volume 3, number 4, Bangkok: Smith’s Place, →OCLC, page 431, column 1:
text: The heroes of those thousand years? / Alas! like running water, gone; / Yet still the fever-blast one hears, / And still the plum-rain patters on.
ref: 1894 January, [anonymous], “Chinese Poetry in English Verse [Thoughts on the View from an Old Tower]”, in Herbert A[llen] Giles, transl., edited by James Knowles, The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, volume XXXV, number CCIII, New York, N.Y.: Leonard Scott Publication Co., […]; London: Sampson Law, Marston & Company, →OCLC, page 123:
text: Besides, the general rainfall caused by the occasional visitation of cyclones and typhoons a long spell of wet weather prevails from the second decade of June to the first decade of July. This rainy season is commonly known as "Bai-u" or "Plum-rain", as it occurs when the plums are getting ripe. This "Plum-rain" season begins earlier in the lower latitude and progresses to the higher latitude.
ref: 1929, Y[oshitarō] Takenobu [ja], “Geography”, in The Japan Year Book: Complete Cyclopaedia of General Information and Statistics on Japan and Japanese Territories for the Year 1929, Tokyo: The Japan Year Book Office […], →OCLC, page 10:
text: In May–June, it may rain for days on end for about a month and is known as the period of "plum rains."
ref: 1974 August 21, “General Condition of China’s Seaports [Port of Shanghai]”, in [anonymous], transl., Translations on People’s Republic of China (JPRS 62776), number 283, Arlington, Va.: U.S. Joint Publications Research Service, →OCLC, page 47:
text: In the Yangtze River Valley, the rainy period from mid-June to mid-July is the noted Meiyu or Plum Rains. This rainy season is characterized by the abundant precipitation, high relative humidity, cloudy or overcast, short daily duration of sunshine, weak surface wind, and the frequent occurrence of heavy rainfalls.
ref: 1991 December, Ding Yihui, “The Short-range Fluctuations of Monsoons and Their Association with the Major Weather Events in China”, in Monsoons over China (Atmospheric Sciences Library; 16), Dordrecht, South Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, published 1994, →ISBN, page 195:
text: We have bad weather in Shanghai leading up to summer, called the plum rains. If the product isn't in a good environment it will get wet, and mould and frost will damage it.
ref: 2000, Carolyn Blackman, “A Lot to Learn: ‘Nowhere Else in the World is It Like This!’”, in China Business: The Rules of the Game, Crows Nest, Sydney, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, →ISBN, part I (The Chinese Face of Globalisation), page 8:
glosses: Also occasionally in the singular form plum rain: the East Asian rainy season from early summer to midsummer in the fourth and fifth lunar months (early June to early or mid-July); also, the rain which falls during this season.