storm cloud

noun — 3 senses

storm cloud

nounalso spelled storm-cloud
1

Climatology, Meteorology, Natural sciences A dark and ominous cloud that appears to indicate a coming storm.

  • Uncertainty hangs over the industry like a storm cloud on a summer's day, preventing long-term planning and investment.2023 March 8, Christian Wolmar, “Labour passes up the chance to deliver a forceful rail policy”, in RAIL, number 978, page 35:
2

Broadly, Figuratively A sign that serious trouble, conflict, or misfortune is approaching.

Derived terms
storm-clouded

storm-cloud

noun
1

Dated Dated form of storm cloud.

  • ’TIS midnight now—athwart the murky air, / Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam; / From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare, / It shews the bending oak, the roaring stream.1810, Margaret Nicholson, edited by John Fitzvictor [pseudonyms; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Thomas Jefferson Hogg], “Fragment. Supposed to Be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Cordé.”, in Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; Being Poems Found amongst the Papers of That Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the King in 1786, Oxford, Oxfordshire: J[ohn] Munday, →OCLC, page 11:
  • O Isla’s maid, yon sea-bird mark, / Her white wing gleams through mist and spray, / Against the storm-cloud, lowering dark, / As to the rock she wheels away;— / Where clouds are dark and billows rave, / Why to the shelter should she come / Of cliff exposed to wind and wave?— / O maid of Isla, ’tis her home.1820, Walter Scott, “The Maid of Isla”, in Miscellaneous Poems, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co. […] and Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages 113–114:
2 more examples
  • The dreariest towns I ever beheld—the tops of the islands in gloomy storm-clouds; […]1881 May 31, John Muir, “Siberian Adventures”, in William Frederic Badè, editor, The Cruise of the Corwin: Journal of the Arctic Expedition in 1881 in Search of De Long and the Jeannette, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, published 1917, →OCLC, pages 36–37:
  • IN midwinter the shadow that hung over John gathered into storm-cloud.1913, William J[ohn] Locke, chapter XIV, in Stella Maris, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head; […], →OCLC, page 184:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — authors: page histories for storm cloud and storm-cloud.