Cloudlike

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Resembling or having the appearance, texture, or form of a mass of water vapor suspended in the atmosphere
2. Having qualities similar to a visible mass of condensed water vapor floating in the sky
3. Appearing soft, light, and airy, like the shape or texture of atmospheric moisture

Etymology: Cloudlike is about as transparent a coinage as English offers: cloud plus the suffix -like, which simply means "resembling" or "having the form of." The suffix has a long pedigree of its own. It traces back through Old English "-līċ" and Proto-West Germanic "-līk" to a Proto-Germanic ancestor, and in Old English "-līċ" was already a productive way to turn a noun into a describing word, as in "manlīċ" for "manly." The word "cloud" itself has a deeper root, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European "*leyg-," a base that carries the sense of something sticky or clinging, which is only indirectly connected to the sky. Over the centuries the Germanic branch of the family carried that root toward the meaning of a mass of hanging vapour, and English "cloud" eventually came to name the sky-borne object we see today. Because "cloudlike" is built from two plain English parts, it needed no coinage event or famous first user to exist. It is simply the adjective you get when you attach "-like" to "cloud."

Synonyms: cloudy, misty, hazy

Antonyms: clear, bright