foehn

• foen, föhn, fohn

Borrowed from German Föhn, from Old High German phonno, from Vulgar Latin faōnius, an alteration of Latin favōnius (“west wind”), from Favōnius (“Roman wind god”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /fɜːn/, /feɪn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /fɝn/, /feɪn/
• Rhymes: -ɜːn, -eɪn, -ɜː(ɹ)n
• Homophones: feign, fern, fane (archaic), fain

foehn (plural foehns)

1. A warm dry wind blowing down the north sides of the Alps, especially in Switzerland.
   • 1971, WW Kibler, translating Gian Fontana, ‘The Mayor of Valdei’, in Bezzola (ed.), The Curly-Horned Cow, Peter Owen 1971, p. 71:

     The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights.

   • 1985, Paul E. Lydolph, The Climate of the Earth, Rowman & Littlefield, page 161:

     The foehns of the northern Alps are world-renowned for the formation of thermal belts on the alp terraces above the deep, U-shaped, glaciated valleys. Here the foehn phenomenon was first identified and the German word for "fall" or "descent" applied to it.

2. (meteorology) A similar katabatic wind developing on the lee side of a mountain.
   • 2011, Claire Dederer, Poser: A Mother's Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, Bloomsbury, page 261:

     The foehn, I learned, was first recorded in the Alps but is found all over the world. The Santa Anas contain the occasional foehn, nicknamed “murder winds” and immortalized in Joan Didion's 1965 essay “Los Angeles Notebook"

   • 2013, Case Adams Naturopath, Asthma Solved Naturally, Logical Books, page 111:

     This is particularly noticeable in Foehn winds—warm winds that descend from mountainous areas down to areas of lower elevation.
     Wind patterns considered Foehn include the dry southerly wind blowing through the Alps, Switzerland and across southern Germany. The Sharav or Hamsin winds blowing through the desert in the Middle East are also Foehn winds. The Sirocco winds that blow through Italy and the Mistral winds that blow through southern France are both considered Foehns.

• chinook

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “foehn”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

• Foehn wind on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Katabatic wind on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Borrowed from German Föhn.

• IPA^(key): /føn/

foehn m (plural foehns)

1. (meteorology) foehn
2. (Switzerland, Alsace) hairdryer

• foehner

• “foehn”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• föhn — prescriptive
• foen

Unadapted borrowing from German Föhn, a genericized trademark.

• IPA^(key): /ˈføn/
• Rhymes: -øn

foehn n (plural foehnuri)

1. hairdryer

   Synonym: uscător de păr

• “foehn”, in DEX online—Dicționare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language) (in Romanian), 2004–2025