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welkin

[ wel-kin ]
/ ˈwɛl kɪn /
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noun Chiefly Literary.

the sky; the vault of heaven.

RELATED WORDS

firmament, heaven, blast, whiff, sky, waft, breath, breeze, draft, puff, wind, ozone, zephyr, ventilation, stratosphere, troposphere, heavens

Nearby words

  1. welfare mother,
  2. welfare state,
  3. welfare statism,
  4. welfare work,
  5. welfarism,
  6. welkom,
  7. well,
  8. well advised,
  9. well and good,
  10. well begun is half done

Origin of welkin

before 900; Middle English welken(e), Old English welcn, variant of wolcen cloud, sky; cognate with German Wolke cloud
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for welkin

British Dictionary definitions for welkin

welkin

/ (ˈwɛlkɪn) /

noun

archaic the sky, heavens, or upper air

Word Origin for welkin

Old English wolcen, welcen; related to Old Frisian wolken, Old Saxon, Old High German wolcan
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

Word Origin and History for welkin

welkin

n.

"sky" (poetic), Old English wolcen "cloud," from Proto-Germanic *welk- (cf. Old Saxon wolkan, Old Frisian wolken, Middle Dutch wolke, Dutch wolk, Old High German wolka, German Wolke "cloud," from PIE *welgh- "wet" (cf. Lithuanian vilgyti "to moisten," Old Church Slavonic viaga "moisture," Czech vlhky "damp").

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper