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Weather
Weather (/weðə/) is a field often discussed in casual conversation.
Meaning[ edit | edit source]
Vocabulary[ edit | edit source]
Basic weather-related words can be classified according to their part of speech; some words may not be possible or common in certain forms. The three forms are a noun (e.g. rain), a verb - typically used in the present progressive (e.g. It’s raining) and an adjective (e.g. It’s rainy). Note the difference in meaning between "It is raining" (meaning "it’s raining now") v. "It’s rainy" (meaning "it may or may not be raining now, but it probably has rained and probably will rain again later"). We often use the dummy pronoun dummy it to refer to the weather.
| Noun | Verb |
Adjective |
|---|---|---|
| cold | - | cold |
| - | - | cool |
| fog | - | foggy |
| hail | hailing | - |
| heat | - | hot |
| ice | - | icy |
| rain | raining | rainy |
| shower | showering | showery |
| sleet | sleeting | sleety |
| snow | snowing | snowy |
| storm | - | stormy |
| sunshine | - | sunny |
| - | - | warm |
| wind | - | windy |
Weather forecast[ edit | edit source]
See weather forecast.
Idioms[ edit | edit source]
There are also many weather-related idioms; see weather idiom.
Appropriacy[ edit | edit source]
The weather is often a safe topic of conversation between people, particularly in Britain and Ireland where the weather, which tends to blow in off the Atlantic, is very variable. People use sayings like
- The weather’s been nice recently, hasn't it?
- (It’s) been very cold recently, hasn't it?
If they live in a different place, they may ask in a letter or phone conversation questions like:
- Have you had good weather recently?
- How’s the weather been where you are?
This may be somewhat culturally specific; in areas of the world with less variable weather it may seem a strange thing to talk about.
Teflpedia has some weather conversation questions.
Pedagogy[ edit | edit source]
EFL learners typically first study weather at elementary level. Icon-based drawings of weather can be used to elicit the target vocabulary. A table of forms above may help categorise the words.
