Rainshower

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A short, sudden fall of rain that usually passes quickly and may end as abruptly as it began
2. A brief spell of rain, often heavy for a moment, that comes and goes within a short time
3. Light or heavy rain lasting only a few minutes, typically arriving suddenly during an otherwise dry or sunny period

Etymology: "Rainshower" is a plain compound, and its history is largely a matter of two old English words joined together. In Old English, the form was "reġnsċūr," built from "regn" (rain) and "scūr" (a storm or shower), so the word has been describing a sudden downpour for well over a thousand years. Its later Middle English forms, "rayne-shour" and "reyne showre," show the spelling drifting toward the modern shape while the sense stayed the same. The word has a close relative in Icelandic, "regnskúr," which means the same thing and is built on the same pairing of roots. The shared structure reflects how the two languages inherited a common Germanic vocabulary for weather, rather than one borrowing from the other.

Synonyms: shower, downpour, drizzle