windless

From Middle English wyndles, equivalent to wind +‎ -less. Cognate with Old Norse vindlauss (“windless”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪndləs/
• Homophone: windlass

windless (comparative more windless, superlative most windless)

1. Devoid of wind; calm.
   • 1818–1819 (date written), Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound”, in Prometheus Unbound […], London: C[harles] and J[ames] Ollier […], published 1820, →OCLC, Act IV, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals), page 150:

     Ye kings of suns and stars, Dæmons and Gods, / Ætherial Dominations, who possess / Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes / Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilderness: […]

   • 1908, Henry James, chapter XII, in The Portrait of a Lady (The Novels and Tales of Henry James; III), New York edition, volume I, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, pages 147–148; republished as The Portrait of a Lady (EBook #2833), United States: Project Gutenberg, 1 September 2001:

     “ […] It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life,” Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion—the heat, the violence, the unreason—and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.

   • 1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter II, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, authorized British edition, London: Martin Secker […], published February 1932 (May 1932 printing), →OCLC:

     [W]hen the wind was that way, which was often, the house was full of the stench of this sulphurous combustion of the earth’s excrement. But even on windless days the air always smelt of something under-earth: sulphur, iron, coal, or acid.

2. Out of breath.
   • 1609, Thomas Dekker, “Lanthorne and Candle-light. Or, The Bell-man’s Second Nights-walke. […] The Second Edition, […]: Of Ferreting. The Manner of Vndooing Gentlemen by Taking vp of Commodities.”, in Alexander B[alloch] Grosart, editor, The Non-dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. […] (The Huth Library), volume III, London, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire: […] [Hazell, Watson, & Viney] for private circulation only, published 1885, →OCLC, page 230:

     [B]eing almost windles, by running after ſenſuall pleaſures too feircely, they [the gentry] are glad (for keeping them-ſelves in breath ſo long as they can) to fal to Ferret-hunting, yͭ is to say, to take vp commodities.

   • 1659, T[itus] Livius [i.e., Livy], “[Book VIII]”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Romane Historie […], London: […] W. Hunt, for George Sawbridge, […], →OCLC, page 253:

     Then came others one after another, windless with running, crying out and saying, that all was gone: and that every where the souldiers goods were rifled, ransacked and carried clean away.

• breathless

windless (plural windlesses)

1. (obsolete) Alternative form of windlass
   • 1661, “Of making cloth with sheeps wool”, in The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge‎, volume I, London: A. Millar, published 1756, page 62:

     The next work is racking or tentering the cloth […] and this is performed by setting it in a frame, which we call tenters, such as are to be seen in many fields about London, wherein (it having a windless at one end) it is first strained to its length, then afterwards to its breadth and parallelism […]

   • 1724, Daniel Defoe (attributed), A General History of the Pirates, London: T. Warner, 2nd edition, Chapter, pp. 114-115,

     […] the Boatswain immediately called to his Consorts, laid hold of the Captain, and made him fast to the Windless, and there pelted him with Glass Bottles, which cut him in a sad Manner […]

• Swindles, swindles, wildness