different between leeward vs leeway

English

Etymology

lee (“side away from the wind”) +? -ward (“direction”)

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?li?w?d/, (nautical) /?l(j)u??d/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?liw??d/, (nautical) /?lu???d/

Adjective

leeward (comparative more leeward, superlative most leeward or leewardmost)

1. On the side sheltered from the wind; in that direction.

Synonyms

• downwind

Antonyms

• windward

Derived terms

• Leeward Islands

Related terms

• leeway

Translations

Adverb

leeward (comparative more leeward, superlative most leeward)

1. Away from the direction from which the wind is blowing; downwind.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 23:

     Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb—one engaged forward and the other aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.

   • ca. 1909, Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, Letter VIII:

     No lady goat is safe from criminal assault, even on the Sabbath Day, when there is a genteman goat within three miles to leeward of her and nothing in the way but a fence fourteen feet high ...

Antonyms

• windward

Translations

Further reading

• leeward on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

English

Etymology

lee (“side away from the wind”) +? way

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?li??we?]
• Rhymes: -i?we?

Noun

leeway (countable and uncountable, plural leeways)

1. The drift of a ship or airplane in a leeward direction.
2. A varying degree or amount of freedom or flexibility.

   Synonyms: freedom, flexibility, latitude, margin, wiggle room, elbowroom

   • 2005, James Gosling et al., The Java Language Specification, Third Edition, Prentice Hall PTR, ?ISBN, section 15.4 “FP-strict Expressions”,^[1]

     Within an expression that is not FP-strict, some leeway is granted for an implementation to use an extended exponent range to represent intermediate results; […]
3. (Britain) An adverse discrepancy or variation in a cumulative process, usually in the phrase make up leeway.

Related terms

• lee
• leeward

Translations

References

• “leeway”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.