clime

From Latin clima, from Ancient Greek κλίμα (klíma, “(zone of) latitude”, literally “inclination”), from κλίνω (klínō, “to slope, incline”). See also climate.

• IPA^(key): /klaɪm/

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• Homophone: climb
• Rhymes: -aɪm

clime (countable and uncountable, plural climes)

1. A particular region defined by its weather or climate.

   After working hard all of his life, Max retired to warmer climes in Florida.

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, lines 242–245:

     Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,
     Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
     That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
     For that celestial light?

   • 1764 December 19 (indicated as 1765), Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, or A Prospect of Society. A Poem. […], London: […] J[ohn] Newbery, […], →OCLC, page 9:

     My ſoul turn from them, turn we to ſurvey / Where rougher climes a nobler race diſplay,

   • 1880, Richard Francis Burton, Os Lusíadas, volume I, page 23:

     "And as their valour, so you trow, defied
     on aspe'rous voyage cruel harm and sore,
     so many changing skies their manhood tried,
     such climes where storm-winds blow and billows roar[.]"

   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC:

     She thought of her husband in some vague warm clime on the other side of the globe, while she was here in the cold.

   • 1919, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, [New York, N.Y.]: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers […], →OCLC:

     She had not yielded for an instant to the enervating charm of the tropics, but contrariwise was more active, more worldly, more decided than anyone in a temperate clime would have thought it possible to be.

2. Climate.

   A change of clime was exactly what the family needed.

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