sirocco

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A hot humid south or southeast wind of southern Italy, Sicily, and the Mediterranean islands, originating in the Sahara Desert as a dry dusty wind but becoming moist as it passes over the Mediterranean.
2. n. A hot or warm southerly wind, especially one moving toward a low barometric pressure center.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The Italian name for a southeast wind. Two distinct classes of Italian winds are included by the term. One is a warm, humid, sultry wind accompanied by rain. This is the characteristic wind on the east side of an area of low pressure, and prevails mainly during the winter season. The other type of sirocco—that to which the term is generally applied in English usage—is a hot, dry, dust-laden wind blowing from the high land of Africa to the coasts of Malta, Sicily, and Naples. During its prevalence the sky is covered with a dense haze, persons suffer from extreme lassitude, and vegetation is parched and burned. No month is free from it, but it is most frequent in the spring. Its direction varies from southeast to southwest.
2. n. A name for a special drying apparatus using a heated blast of air derived from a fan, and blowing over the material to be dried, as fruit, or tea-leaves.
3. n. A trade-name for a form of fan-blower.

Wiktionary

1. n. A hot southerly to southeasterly wind on the Mediterranean that originates in the Sahara and adjacent North African regions.
2. n. A draft of hot air from an artificial source of heat.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An oppressive, relaxing wind from the Libyan deserts, chiefly experienced in Italy, Malta, and Sicily.
2. n. In general, any hot dry wind of cyclonic origin, blowing from arid or heated regions, including the desert wind of Southern California, the harmattan of the west coasts of Africa, the hot winds of Kansas and Texas, the kamsin of Egypt, the leste of the Madeira Islands, and the leveche of Spain.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a windstorm that lifts up clouds of dust or sand