Spindrift
{{Short description|Spray blown from cresting waves in gales}}
{{Other uses}}
{{Wiktionary}}
Spindrift (more rarely spoondrift){{cite book|title=Shorter Oxford English dictionary|year=2007|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=United Kingdom|isbn=978-0199206872|pages=3804}} is the spray blown from cresting waves during a gale. This spray, which "drifts" in the direction of the gale, is one of the characteristics of a wind speed of 8 Beaufort and higher at sea.{{cite web |url=http://www.lymingtonharbour.co.uk/tide%20weather/tide%20weather.htm |title=Archived copy |access-date=2011-12-14 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927060041/http://www.lymingtonharbour.co.uk/tide%20weather/tide%20weather.htm |archive-date=2011-09-27 }} In Greek and Roman mythology, Leucothea was the goddess of spindrift.See footnote 117 in Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin Books, 2002).
Terminology
Spindrift is derived from the Scots language, but its further etymology is uncertain."spindrift, n.", in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–, OCLC [https://worldcat.org/oclc/57069714 57069714], reproduced from W[illiam] Grant and D[avid] D. Murison, editors, The Scottish National Dictionary, Edinburgh: Scottish National Dictionary Association, 1931–1976, OCLC [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/847228655 847228655]. Although the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it is a variant of spoondrift based on the way that word was pronounced in southwest Scotland,{{cite book|entry=spindrift, n.|entry-url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/186695|entry-url-access=subscription|title=OED Online|location=Oxford, Oxfordshire|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=March 2022}} from spoon or spoom ("to sail briskly with the wind astern, with or without sails hoisted") and drift ("a mass of matter driven or forced onward together in a body, etc., especially by wind or water"),{{cite book|entry=spoondrift, n.|entry-url=https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/187412|entry-url-access=subscription|title=OED Online|location=Oxford, Oxfordshire|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=September 2019}} this is doubted by the Scottish National Dictionary, because spoondrift is attested later than spindrift and it seems unlikely that the Scots spelling would have superseded the English one, and because the early use of the word in the form spenedrift by James Melville (1556–1614) is unlikely to have derived from spoondrift. In any case, spindrift was popularized in England through its use in the novels of the Scottish-born author William Black (1841–1898).
Spindrift or spoondrift is also used to refer to fine sand or snow that is blown off the ground by the wind."[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spindrift Spindrift]" on Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 20 July 2008.