mackerel sky


noun
  1. an extensive group of cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds, especially when well-marked in their arrangement: so called because of a resemblance to the scales on a mackerel.

Origin of mackerel sky

1
First recorded in 1660–70

Words Nearby mackerel sky

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use mackerel sky in a sentence

  • The old proverb, “mackerel sky, soon wet or soon dry,” expresses this uncertainty.

    Reading the Weather | Thomas Morris Longstreth
  • Another form that the cirro stratus may assume is the mackerel sky,—clouds with the light and shade of the scales of a fish.

    Reading the Weather | Thomas Morris Longstreth
  • I have never met with ten persons who applied even the term “mackerel sky” to the same precise form of cirro-stratus.

    The Philosophy of the Weather | Thomas Belden Butler
  • The sky was what is called a mackerel sky--rows and rows of faint down-plumes of cloud, just tinted with the midsummer sunset.

    The War of the Worlds | H. G. Wells
  • They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a brightly shining mackerel sky.

    Farthest North | Fridtjof Nansen

British Dictionary definitions for mackerel sky

mackerel sky

noun
  1. a sky patterned with cirrocumulus or small altocumulus clouds

Origin of mackerel sky

1
from the similarity to the pattern on a mackerel's back

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012