wintertide

English

WOTD – 25 December 2015

An 1893 engraving of a winter landscape based on a painting by Eero Järnefelt, from Finland in the Nineteenth Century by Finnish Authors (1894)

Etymology

From Middle English wintertid, wyntertyde, from Old English winter + tid (“time”). By surface analysis, winter +‎ -tide. Cognate to Dutch wintertijd (“winter time”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɪntə(ɹ)taɪd/
• (General American, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈwɪntɚtaɪd/, [ˈwɪɾ̃ɚtaɪd]

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: win‧ter‧tide

Noun

wintertide (plural wintertides)

1. (archaic, literary) wintertime
   • 1867 February 16, Algernon C[harles] Swinburne, “Child's Song in Winter”, in Eliakim Littell, editor, Littell's Living Age, volume IV, number 46 (4th series; volume XCII, number 1185, from the beginning), Boston, Mass.: Littell and Gay, →OCLC, page 472:

     Shut out the flower-time, / Sunbeam and shower-time; / Make way for our time, / The winter-tide.

   • 1891, Robert S. Littell, editor, Littell's Living Age, volume CLXXXVIII, Boston, Mass.: T. H. Carter & Company, →OCLC, page 194:

     O winter tide, O winter tide, / Thy coming brings us sadness; / Afar are those we hold most dear, / Here men are strange, and skies are drear; […]

   • 1936, A[lfred] E[dward] Housman, “Diffugere Nives [translation of Horace, Odes, IV.vii]”, in More Poems, London: Jonathan Cape, →OCLC, V, lines 9–12:

     Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring / Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers / Comes autumn with his apples scattering; / Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs.

   • 2014 February 6, “Sochi 2014: A Nottingham skater's ice dream”, in Impact: The University of Nottingham's Official Student Magazine‎, archived from the original on 12 February 2014:

     […] Figure Skating was actually the very first winter sport included at the summer Olympic games in London 1908. Its wintertide equivalence was eventually introduced in 1924.

   • 2014 December 18, Emily Kelley, “14 winter quotes to make the freezing cold weather seem a little less terrible”, in Bustle‎:

     So, grab yourself a spot of tea or a boozy hot chocolate, and celebrate the beginning of winter with these wintertide-inspired quotes.

Quotations

• For more quotations using this term, see Citations:wintertide.

Translations

wintertime — see wintertime