Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A strong easterly wind of the Mediterranean area.
- n. A native or inhabitant of the Levant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An easterly wind blowing up the Mediterranean from the direction of the Levant.
- n. One who levants; one who runs away disgracefully.
- n. Specifically One who bets at a horse-race, and runs away without paying the wager lost.
Wiktionary
- n. An Easterly wind that blows from the Mediterranean, through the straits of Gibraltar to the Atlantic.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Colloq. Eng. One who levants, or decamps.
- n. A strong easterly wind peculiar to the Mediterranean.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an easterly wind in the western Mediterranean area
Examples
““This storm came like a levanter in the Mediterranean.””
“The flight, therefore, of the fair levanter, after so brief an intercourse, was quite enough to upset him.”
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847
“A gentle levanter was wafting them through the Archipelago.”
“Behind them are seen the heroes Scroggins and Turner; and at the opposite end of the table, a Wake-ful one, but a grosser man than either, and something of the _levanter_: the bald-headed stag on his right goes by the quaint cognomen of the _Japan oracle_, from the retentive memory he possesses on all sporting and pugilistic events.”
“A wind, whose effects were like those of the Spanish levanter, swept the ice of the Strom-fiord, driving the snow to the upper end of the gulf.”
“How came it that no aurora of early light, no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before this wild levanter of change?”
“Count Massigli [3] measured cannot be searched and torn up from its sleeping depths without a levanter or a monsoon.”
“Blount took an opportunity to whisper into Raleigh's ear, "This storm came like a levanter in the Mediterranean.”
“Many a gallant sailing-ship commander has been driven to despair in other days by the friendly levanter failing them just as they were wellnigh through the Gut or had reached the foot of the majestic Rock, when the west wind would assert its power over its feebler adversary, and unless he was in a position to fetch an anchorage behind the Rock or in the bay, their fate was sealed for days, and sometimes weeks, in hard beating to prevent as little ground being lost as possible.”
“The air was sickly; and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering levanter ” oppressive to the functions of life, and to an invalid denying all exercise.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘levanter’.
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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boxing the compass
Names of winds, especially exotic, traditional and "non-English" names.
zephyr, simoom, tramontana, mistral, typhoon, maelstrom, gale, hurricane, chinook, monsoon, tradewind, doldrums and 14 more...
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