Wintry

a. Also 7 winterie, 9 -y. [OE. wintriʓ, = OHG. wintirig, etc., f. WINTER sb.¹ + -Y¹; but in modern use a new formation.]

  1.  Of or pertaining to winter; occurring, existing or found in winter; adapted or suitable for winter. Now rare or merged in 2, being replaced by ‘winter’ attrib. (WINTER sb.¹ 3).

  c. 888.  Ælfred, Boeth., v. § 2. Swa deð eac se ðe wintreʓum wederum wile blostman secan. Ibid. (c. 893), Oros., I. i. 12. On þæm wintreʓum tidum.

  1611.  Cotgr., Hyvernal, winterie, winterlie.

c. 1630.  Milton, Passion, 6. In Wintry solstice like the shortn’d light Soon swallow’d up in dark and long out-living night.

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., I. 271. The wise Ant her wintry Store provides. Ibid. (1697), Æneis, VI. 298. The wintry Misleto.

1770.  Goldsm., Des. Vill., 133. To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn.

1795.  Cowper, Needless Alarm, 20. Her berries red, With which the fieldfare, wint’ry guest, is fed.

1860.  Tyndall, Glac., I. v. 40. Where the wintry edifices had fallen.

  2.  Having the quality of winter; of such a kind as occurs in winter; characteristic of winter.

1590.  Spenser, F. Q., I. xi. 21. When wintry storme his wrathfull wreck does threat.

1713.  Rowe, Jane Shore, II. 24. The Wintry Sky Descends in Storms.

c. 1781.  Burns, Winter, i. The wintry west extends his blast.

1825.  Scott, Betrothed, ii. A barbed horse and his rider will fear to stem the wintry flood.

1830.  Lyell, Princ. Geol., I. 120. At this period, the climate of equinoctial lands might resemble that of the present temperate zone, or perhaps be far more wintery.

1856.  Kane, Arctic Expl., I. xxvii. 355. This mossing … is a frightfully wintry operation.

1876.  C. F. Hall, Polar Exped., 415. One of its [fog’s] effects was to cover the spars and rigging with great ice-crystals, which gave the vessel a wintery appearance.

  3.  Exposed or subject to the effect or influence of winter; chilled or blasted by winter.

1697.  Dryden, Æneis, IV. 205. When he leaves the frost Of wintry Xanthus.

1803.  Heber, Palestine, 56. The wintry top of giant Lebanon.

1817.  Shelley, Rev. Islam, VI. xxviii. The wintry loneliness Of those dead leaves.

1853.  Dickens, Bleak Ho., xii. Endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees.

1918.  J. Storer Clouston, in Blackw. Mag., Oct., 464. You saw nothing but a field or two of bleached wintry grass.

  4.  fig. with various shades of meaning; esp. (a) Aged, infirm or withered from age; (of hair) white with age, ‘snowy’; (b) devoid of fervor or affection, ‘cold,’ ‘chilling’; (c) destitute of warmth or brightness, dismal, dreary, cheerless.

1633.  P. Fletcher, Pisc. Ecl., VII. i. Cold, wintry, wither’d Tithon.

1748.  Richardson, Clarissa, lvi. (1768), III. 28. Nodding at each other in opposite chimney-corners in a winter-evening, and over a wintry Love.

1822.  Shelley, Scenes fr. Faust, ii. 15. Nothing of such an influence do I feel. My body is all wintry.

1846.  Mrs. A. Marsh, Father Darcy, xliii. A faint wintry kind of hope.

1847.  Tennyson, Princess, VI. 310. So she, and turn’d askance a wintry eye.

1876.  Besant & Rice, Golden Butterfly, vi. Her cold face shone … with the wintry light of a forced smile.

1895.  Pall Mall Gaz., 5 Oct., 3/3. His [George Meredith’s] latest work met with a somewhat wintry welcome from the [publishing] house which he had previously favoured.

1901.  W. Adamson, Life Joseph Parker, xv. 192. There the black raiment and wintry locks of wisdom.

  5.  Used advb. qualifying another adj. poet.

1892.  W. Watson, Poems, 9. Thine … Is wintry chill.

  Hence Wintrify v., trans. to make wintry (rare); Wintrily adv., in a wintry manner (lit. and fig.); Wintriness, wintry quality or condition (lit. and fig.).

1855.  Lynch, Lett. to Scattered, vi. 88. Wise divine Love … re-imparting to a world which hate had *wintrified the summer warmth of life.

c. 1822.  Beddoes, Poems, Pygmalion, 159. Thou … dost shiver *Wintrily sad.

1867–8.  J. Thomson, In the Room, ii. Flies … now slept wintrily abashed.

1884.  Rose Terry Cooke, in Harper’s Mag., Sept., 613/1. She began at last to smile wintrily and forbearingly.

1824.  in Spirit Publ. Jrnls. (1825), 512. With all this *winteryness, he is still a boy.

1853.  Kane, Grinnell Exp., xxxii. (1856), 277. To the east and west there is no such interception to our winteryness.

1916.  Spectator, 18 March, 383/1.