[f. WINDY a. + -NESS.] The quality or condition of being windy.
1. Windy condition of the atmosphere; prevalence of windy weather.
a. 1687. Petty, Pol. Anat. (1691), 51. The windiness of the same Month was at Dublin 20 and at London but 17.
Mod. The windiness of March and the showeriness of April are proverbial.
† 2. Air as an ‘element’: = WIND sb.1 8. rare.
1587. Golding, De Mornay, xv. 266. Neither is there any moysture, any wyndinesse [orig. flabile], or any firy matter in them.
3. Flatulence; concr. = WIND sb.1 10. Now rare.
c. 1450. Burgh, Secrees, 1932. Wyn moost Reed … Take out of mesure … reyseth wyndynesse.
1545. Raynalde, Byrth Mankynde, II. vii. (1552), 100 b. To discusse & vanquyshe ventosyte and wyndynesse.
1590. Barrough, Meth. Phisick, I. i. (1596), 2. Sometime it [sc. headache] commeth … through windinesse ingendred in some part of the head, being weake.
1725. Fam. Dict., s.v. Honey ¶ 3, Raw Honey, by Reason of its Acrimony, loosens the Body, and causes Windiness.
1897. Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 506. A temporary windiness.
b. Quality of causing or tendency to cause ‘wind’: = FLATULENCE 2 b. Now rare.
1576. [T. Twyne], Schoolemaster, III. xii. N ij. Beanes are naturally more windy then barly,… for that beanes are of a … more … grosse substance then barly, which is light and houer, and is sooner discharged of the windines.
1664. Taylor, in Evelyn, Pomona, 50. People labour to correct that windiness which they fancy to be in it [sc. cider].
1707. Mortimer, Husb., 594. Ginger renders it [sc. cider] brisk, and corrects its Windiness.
4. Resemblance to, or admixture of, the sound of the wind.
1879. Organ Voicing, 17. Windiness. If the conveyances and wind chest holes are sound, blame attaches solely to the pipe.
5. fig. ‘Airiness,’ emptiness, want of substance; inflated or verbose style.
1614. Brerewood, Lang. & Relig., Pref. ¶ b. His modest, and humble charity (vertues which rarely cohabite with the swelling windenesse of much knowledge).
1649. E. Reynolds, Hosea, v. 35. Full of vanity, windinesse, vexation, disappointment.
1866. Sat. Rev., 19 May, 584/1. The feebleness and windiness of bad poets is commonly to be traced to their reluctance to prop up their minds on the side of facts and observation and learning.
