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What is "weathercock"

Crossword clues for weathercock

weathercock
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
weathercock
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Carol looked up at the weathercock as the car drew up at her house in the cobbled square.
▪ In a wind, however, the model will only turn until the trim offset is balanced by the weathercock effect.
▪ It had been going more and more slowly since diving down from the weathercock.
▪ On the exterior is an octagonal spire, called the Torre de Gallo, after its weathercock.
▪ Sharpe looked up at the weathercock on the stable roof and saw the wind had backed southerly.
▪ The bunch pulled out by the weathercock had left the rest of the twigs loose in their binding.
▪ These are designed, rather on the principle of the weathercock, to orientate themselves to the instantaneous local air movement.
▪ We have already seen that the weathercock effect due to forward flight makes the tail rotor too effective.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Weathercock

Weathercock \Weath"er*cock`\, v. t. To supply with a weathercock; to serve as a weathercock for.

Whose blazing wyvern weathercock the spire.
--Tennyson.

Weathercock

Weathercock \Weath"er*cock`\, n.

  1. A vane, or weather vane; -- so called because originally often in the figure of a cock, turning on the top of a spire with the wind, and showing its direction. ``As a wedercok that turneth his face with every wind.''
    --Chaucer.

    Noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation.
    --Longfellow.

  2. Hence, any thing or person that turns easily and frequently; one who veers with every change of current opinion; a fickle, inconstant person.

Wiktionary
weathercock

n. 1 A weather vane, sometimes in the form of a cockerel. 2 (context figuratively English) One who veers with every change of current opinion; a fickle, inconstant person. vb. (context intransitive of a boat English) To turn upwind because of the difference in water pressure on two sides.

WordNet
weathercock

n. weathervane with a vane in the form of a rooster

Usage examples of "weathercock".

Soon I would see the golden cupolas and brass weathercocks of Nonsuch House rising into the smoke-filled London sky.

At the pressure of his knees Drumfire spun round like a weathercock in a fluke of wind.

Board of Public Works was responsible: as a single item in the general expenditure the weathercock of the Palace of Legislature had had voted to it a new coat of gilt, and this steeplejack was now engaged in putting it on.

So felt he who wrote the epitaph of the builder of the dome which looks down on the crosses and weathercocks that glitter over London.

A man who preferred his grudges blood fresh, Mearn doused pricked temper to taciturn silence time and again, while the courtiers spun to their hatreds like weathercocks.

And then contemporary skyscrapers were so very anonymousno signs or names, no pinnacle statues or weathercocks or crosses, no distinctive facades and cornices, no architectural ornament at all: just huge blank slabs of featureless stone, or concrete or glass that was either sleekly bright with sun or dark with shadow.

There was not a view in the world, not excepting Chambord or the Alhambra, more aerial, more impressive, more magical, than this wood of pinnacles, belfries, chimneys, weathercocks, spirals, screws, lanterns, perforated as if they had been struck by a nipping-tool, pavilions and turrets, all differing in form, height, and altitude.

High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver!

He pivoted on his heels like a weathercock, uncurtaining all those shiny teeth.