Also willys, -ie-, wulli(e)-, wully-wa. [?] A sailor’s (whaler’s, etc.) name for a sudden violent squall, orig. in the Straits of Magellan.
1842. J. D. Hooker, in Life (1918), I. vi. 137. A squall or Williewaw, as they are called [round Cape Horn].
1863. Fitzroy, Weather Bk., 125, note. Those whirlwind squalls formerly called by the sealers in Tierra del Fuego, ‘williwaws.’
1901. Kipling, Kim, xiii. Where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance.
