winding
Noun pluralwindings (some meanings)
Pluralwindings (some meanings)
- 1Bending, turning, or twisting in shape rather than running straight.
They drove for hours along a winding coastal highway.
A narrow, winding path led through the dense forest.
Similartwisting, meandering, curving, serpentine, tortuous
Oppositestraight
Note
The everyday sense of roads, rivers and paths has been at home since the 1500s. Shakespeare's stream strays "by many winding nooks" to the ocean. Bacon turns the shape into a political image with "this Winding-Ivy of a Plantagenet," a climber that kills the true tree. Even Topsell's ox with a "winding and weak" neck uses it for a bent form, not a moving one.
- 2Moving in a sinuous, twisting way as it goes forward.
A winding column of marchers made its way down the avenue.
We watched the winding stream of refugees crossing toward the border.
Similarsinuous, meandering, twisting, serpentine
Oppositestraight
Note
Serpents and swallows are its classic subjects. Dryden's Virgil (1697) coils the sea serpents' "winding volumes" around Laocoön, and John Clare in 1820 has swallows "check their winding flight." The adjective describes motion, not a fixed outline, and that separates it from the shape sense: a winding road stays where it is, while a winding swallow does not.
- 3Of a staircase, built in a spiral or helical shape, curving around as it climbs.
The lighthouse had a tight winding staircase of iron steps.
She paused halfway up the winding stair to catch her breath.
Oppositestraight
Note
Builders' usage fixed it to stairs. Joseph Moxon in 1679 explains how winding stairs are projected on a round profile, and John Evelyn in 1644 admires the "winding geometrical stone stayres" at the Tuileries. Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop carries the winding stair of a tower into fiction. Both stair and stairs take it, and spiral is its plainer synonym.
- 4The act of twisting a thing, or of passing it around another object in coils or loops, as with thread or rope.
The careful winding of thread onto the loom prevented any tangles.
The winding of the rope around the post secured the boat for the night.
Similarcoiling, wrapping, twisting, spooling
Note
The turning family begins here. Middle English winding already covered twisting thread together and wrapping cloth around something, alongside curves, bends and the meandering of a river. Dickens, in Sketches by Boz (1834), uses it for the fiddly business of readying a guitar: "screwing and tightening, and winding and tuning." The hands-on, deliberate sense of twisting by hand is still the core of the noun.
- 5A curving, sinuous, or twisting movement; the twists and turns of a path or course.
The endless winding of the trail down into the gorge tested our patience.
Her thoughts followed the lazy winding of the creek below the porch.
Similarmeandering, twisting, curving, snaking
Note
It is mostly plural and readily figurative. To follow someone "through every winding," as Charlotte Brontë wrote in 1849, is to track each turn of a course. Hugh Latimer in 1552 uses the singular for the writhing of a dying body. When the turns belong to a mind or a plot rather than a path or a body, the word has crossed into its figurative twists.
- 6The act of tightening the mainspring of a clock or other clockwork mechanism, often expressed as winding up.
Forgetting the nightly winding of the watch left it dead by morning.
The grandfather clock needed a careful winding once every week.
Note
The clockwork sense usually takes up. Edward Young's Love of Fame (1725) mocks a tongue "that runs for ages without winding-up," a sign of how early the mechanism became a figure for people. Without up the word still serves for watches and clocks, but up makes the mechanism plain. Compare the winch sense, where up is optional rather than usual.
- 7A length of material that has been coiled or wrapped around something else.
A thick winding of twine held the parcel firmly together.
The fisherman checked the winding of line on his reel before casting.
Note
This is the concrete result of the act of wrapping: the coil itself rather than the coiling. Milton's Arcades (1634) gives it to a wood spirit who curls the grove "with ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove," so it can be ornamental as well as practical. Its specialized offshoots name particular coils, from the wire in a motor to the wrap on a violin bow.
- 8A length of wire coiled about a transformer's core or an electric motor's armature.
The motor's primary winding overheated and burned out under the load.
Technicians rewound the transformer's secondary winding entirely by hand.
Similarcoil
Note
Engineers use it as a count noun. A transformer has a primary and a secondary winding, and a motor's armature carries its own. Each is a continuous coil of insulated conductor that either produces a changing magnetic flux or has a current induced in it. When a winding burns out, it is rewound, and that verb is the usual name for the repair.
- 9Present participle of wind.
The river was winding slowly through the broad valley.
She stood by the window winding thread onto a wooden spool.
Note
Two verbs share this form. One is the verb of air: blowing a horn, winnowing grain, leaving someone breathless, following by scent, and, in British use, bringing up a baby's wind after a feed or turning a boat around. The other is the verb of turning, as in winding thread or a river winding through a valley. Both form the progressive with be, and both double as gerunds.
- 10The curving, sinuous, or twisting shape of something.
From the air, the winding of the canyon looked like a giant scar.
The sculptor admired the smooth winding of the carved vine.
Similarcurve, twist, meander, curvature
Note
Where the moving sense follows a course, this one names the shape left behind: a coastline's bend, the windings of a labyrinth, the "wards or windings of the key" in Chapman's Homer. It too prefers the plural. Holland's Pliny (1601) pairs it with a word of enclosure, placing a city on "the utmost winding and nook of Syrtis."
- 11
- 12Of speech or writing, meandering and indirect rather than getting to the point.
The witness gave a winding account that the lawyer struggled to follow.
Readers gave up on the novel's winding, digressive opening chapter.
Similarindirect, meandering, roundabout, circuitous, tortuous
Oppositedirect, straightforward, concise, succinct
Note
Speech and writing that take the long way round are its subject. Among its neighbors, tortuous is the most critical, while circuitous and indirect simply note the detour. Winding sits closest to meandering and suggests a rambling route more than a fault. It pairs naturally with account, explanation and discourse. William Camden's Britain (1610) applies it to the "winding revolutions" of history itself.
- 13Twists and turns in an event, in one's thinking, or in something else; also moral crookedness, craftiness, or shiftiness.
The winding of the plot kept readers guessing until the final chapter.
His colleagues grew wary of the winding behind his every promise.
Similarconvolution, twist, deviousness, craftiness, shiftiness
Note
The figurative plural covers minds, language and intrigue. Scott's lawyer traces human nature "through all her windings," and Isaac Barrow sets the windings of language beside the rovings of fancy. The darker edge, craftiness, sits close by: Robert Burton's "careful windings, & running in & out" in 1621 are maneuvers as much as turns. Context decides whether the word admires complexity or suspects it.
- 14SayWIN-ding/ˈwɪndɪŋ/The act of sounding a wind instrument, most often a horn, by blowing air through it.
A long winding of the trumpet signaled the start of the procession.
The huntsman's winding of the horn echoed across the frosted valley.
Similarblowing, sounding, blast
Note
The hunting field is its natural home. George Berkeley in 1732 and Walter Scott in Woodstock (1826) both set the winding of horns beside the cry of hounds. The usual pattern puts the instrument after of: the winding of a horn. It shares the wind of breath and air with the winnowing sense, so the phrase says nothing about a horn's coils.
- 15SayWIN-ding/ˈwɪndɪŋ/Causing a person to become breathless or short of breath.
The winding blow to his stomach left him doubled over and gasping.
She took a winding fall that knocked the air clean from her lungs.
Note
The adjective of the punch to the stomach and the punishing run describes whatever knocks the breath out of you, whether by a blow or by hard exertion. It is usually comparable, so one climb can be more winding than another. Out of context it collides with the twisting meaning, and a winding climb is likelier to be read as one that zigzags. Name the cause of breathlessness when this sense matters.
- 16SayWIN-ding/ˈwɪndɪŋ/The act of winnowing, in which grain is exposed to moving air so that the chaff is blown away from it.
The winding of the threshed oats was best done on a breezy day.
Farmhands managed the winding of the rye before it went to the granary.
Similarwinnowing
Note
Here the word belongs to moving air, not to turning. Middle English winding came from winden, "to expose to the wind, ventilate, winnow." That same verb could also leave someone out of breath, which is where the "breathless" adjective comes from. As a farming term it chiefly works attributively, modifying another noun rather than standing alone as the subject of a sentence.
- 17SayWIN-ding/ˈwɪndɪŋ/Of a horn or wind instrument: blown in order to produce a sound.
The winding horn of the chase carried farther than any voice could.
He kept a winding trumpet for signaling the watch at dawn.
Note
Here the horn is the one being sounded, not one shaped in coils. Because many horns are coiled, the phrase invites misreading. Unlike the "breathless" adjective, it is not comparable: a horn is either winding or it is not. It stands before the instrument's name, as in a winding horn, so let the surrounding sentence make the sound audible.
- 18The act or process of turning a boat or ship so that it faces a particular direction.
The narrowboat crew reversed slowly, completing the winding before the lock.
The lock-keeper watched the careful winding of the coal barge against the tide.
Note
The British verb behind it is to wind a boat: to turn it around so that the wind strikes it on the opposite side. The noun names that maneuver. Outside British waters, plain turning will be better understood. Do not confuse it with hoisting by winch, which is also a shipboard job but means raising a load rather than changing a vessel's heading.
- 19Lengths of fine silk, metal wire, or whalebone wrapped tightly around the stick of a string instrument's bow, next to the leather grip at the heel.
The winding just above the frog had loosened, so the bow needed attention.
He admired the silver winding that wrapped the lower end of the antique bow.
Note
A bow maker's term with a twin: the same wrapping also goes by the name lapping, and anyone reading about lutherie should treat the two as one thing. It is a narrow case of the general "wound-around" meaning. Middle English winding already covered twisting thread together and wrapping cloth around something, so this workshop sense keeps a very old meaning in use. The wrapping is not only decorative: it adds mass and protects the wood.
- 20Flexible and pliant; able to bend easily without breaking.
Note
This sense, long obsolete, names the pliancy that lets a twig be wound at all. It belongs with the withy sense, since a withy is prized for bending around a bundle without snapping. Today pliant, supple or flexible does the job. A modern reader would take a winding withy to mean one that curves, not one that bends.
- 21Morally crooked in character; crafty and shifty.
The pamphleteer denounced the steward as a winding schemer who served only himself.
I care not though men call me impudent, / Smooth-tongu'd, audacious, petulant, abhominable, / Forger of vvords and lie, contentious Barretour, / Old, vvinding, bragging, teſty, crafty fox.
1655, Thomas Stanley, “The Clouds of Aristophanes. Added (not as a Comicall Divertisement for the Reader, who can Expect Little in that…Note
It works as a moral insult in Thomas Stanley's Clouds of Aristophanes (1655), where winding stands in a list with bragging, testy and "crafty fox." The image is a path that never runs straight, set against upright dealing. The adjective is obsolete in this sense, and the noun keeps the idea in its figurative twists. A modern reader hears winding excuses as rambling, not dishonest.
- 22A variation worked into a tune.
Note
The musical term is obsolete, yet T. S. Eliot brings it back in "Portrait of a Lady" (1915): "Among the windings of the violins / And the ariettes / Of cracked cornets." There the plural evokes the melodic turns of a salon performance. A writer reaching for it today should frame it as Eliot does, among instruments and tunes, so it is not mistaken for coiled strings.
- 23An ornament, pattern, or other thing shaped with twists and curves.
An elaborate winding of wrought iron framed the chapel doorway.
Each panel bore a delicate winding of painted foliage.
Note
Older English could call a twisting ornament a winding, but that use is obsolete. Modern English says scrollwork, a scroll or a twist, and keeps winding for the shape rather than the object, as in the curving-form sense. When the word turns up this way in an old text, it names the ornament itself, not the act of making it.
- 24A flexible, slender shoot or twig used as a band or for binding; also the twigs used to make or repair a wall, or the process of working them into place.
As for the manner of making vvalls, by davvbing vvindings and hurdles vvith mud and clay, also of rearing them othervvhiles vvith unbaked bricke; vvho is ſo ignorant that he knovveth it not?
1601, Pliny the Elder, “[Book XXXV.] Of Mud Walls: Of Bricke Walls, and the Order and Manner of Making Them.”Note
Wattle walls are where this word lived: the pliant withies woven into a wall, and the work of weaving them. Middle English winding already meant wattling and wattles. Holland's Pliny (1601) describes walls made "by dawbing windings and hurdles with mud and clay." The word survives only in dialect, so in general writing withy or withe is the clear choice.
Showing meanings only.
winding is a form of wind
wind, verb: To travel or follow a path that has numerous curves and bends. Full entry
- Spelling
- wind → winding: add -ing
Practice
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Origins
The noun comes from Middle English winding, meaning the act of exposing something to the wind, airing, or winnowing, from the verb winden (to ventilate, to winnow, or to catch a scent) plus the suffix -ing. It is analysable as "wind" (to blow air) plus "-ing".
The noun comes from Middle English winding, meaning a curve, turn, twisting, or wrapping, partly from the verb winden (to move in a twisting course, to bend, twist, or wrap) plus -ing, and partly from Old English windung (a woven object), from windan (to twist, wind, or curl). This traces back through Proto-Germanic *windaną to Proto-Indo-European *wendʰ- (to turn or wind).