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  1. welkin love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Archaic The vault of heaven; the sky.
  2. n. Archaic The upper air.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The sky; the vault of heaven; the heavens.
  2. Sky-blue.

Wiktionary

  1. n. archaic The sky, the upper air; the heavens.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. The visible regions of the air; the vault of heaven; the sky.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. the apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English welkne, wolkne ("clouds, heavens"), from Old English wolcnu ("clouds"), plural of wolcen ("cloud"), from Proto-Germanic *wulkanan, *wulkō, *wulkô (“cloud”), from Proto-Indo-European *welg-, *welk- (“wet, moist”). Cognate with Dutch wolk ("cloud"), Low German Wulke ("cloud"), German Wolke ("cloud"), German welken ("to wither"). More at welk. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English welken, from Old English wolcen, weolcen, cloud. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. heave
  1. lift

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. surface

same context (4)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. daimone
  1. aery
  1. buildeth
  1. b}

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Comments

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  • jmjarmstrong JM wandered out, squinted up at the welkin, saw all was where it should be, wandered back, shut the door behind him. Feb 1, 2009

  • she Intriguing, qroqqa! Poplollies and Bellibones: A Celebration of Lost Words, where I found welkin, states (This was simplified in the book's glossary to what I posted below): "From the Saxon words wealcan 'to roll,' and wolke 'a cloud.' It is also connected to the German word wolle 'wool,' used to describe the wooly quality of clouds. Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
         The starry welkin cover thee anon
         With drooping fog as black as Alcheron"
    You may very well be right, but it's one author's (informed?) opinion. I don't find myself leaning in either direction in particular. Jul 17, 2008

  • qroqqa Whoa! Etymological connexion with 'wool'? Or 'walk'? I think not. It's true that 'welkin' originally meant "cloud" and it has no cognates outside West Germanic, but it's pretty clearly a stem *wolk(ə)n- in all those (OE and OFris wolcn-, OS wolcan, OHG wolkan), so if it were related to 'wool' you'd have to account for both the /k/ and the /n/.

    It's true also that 'walk' originally meant "roll", but it was always the rolling or tossing of the sea (10th cent.: Feruentis oceani wealcendre sæ), or people's metaphorical tossing with discomfort. There's no evidence that it was associated with the motions of clouds. Again, the deeper etymology of 'walk' is unknown as it has no clear cognates outside Germanic. So 'welkin' doesn't look like it comes from (the etymon of) 'walk'.

    Finally, to derive either of these from (the etymon of) 'wool' is really stretching plausibility. The Germanic root was *wull-, so it's got the wrong vowel. You then have to suggest a semantic pathway from "wool" to "toss" (the waves of the sea don't toss like wool), and put forward a /k/ suffix to make this transition.

    Or you could disregard 'walk' and try to get straight from 'wool' to 'welkin' by losing the doubled /l/ and adding a /-k(ə)n/ suffix and claiming that clouds were called woolly things. I'm not saying that's impossibile, just that there's no evidence for it and it looks a lot like mere vague similarity.
    Jul 11, 2008

  • she "Sky with wooly clouds" from Saxon wealcan 'to roll,' wolke 'cloud,' and German wolle 'wool.' Jul 11, 2008

  • missanthropist Antiquated word for clouds.

    Described in "To make the welkin ring".
    from James Greenough's Words and Their Ways in English Speech, 1901 May 16, 2008

  • yarb Also (more commonly) the sky, the heavens.

    "with feats of Arms / From either end of Heav'n the welkin burns." - Paradise Lost, Book 2. Jan 11, 2008

  • sionnach See also make the welkin ring. Jan 11, 2008

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‘welkin’ has been looked up 2109 times, loved by 5 people, added to 51 lists, commented on 7 times, and has a Scrabble score of 13.