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PlainSpell

windy

win·dy/ˈwɪn.di/adjective, noun

windy is spelled W-I-N-D-Y, 2 syllables: win·dy. The wrong spelling people search most is wimdy: about 240 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 196 of all searches for the word. Windy is an adjective meaning “Accompanied by wind”.

How many letters and syllables are in windy?

Letters5: W-I-N-D-Y
Syllables2: win·dy
In writing3.7 times per million words; the 13,496th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searched1; the most searched, wimdy, about 240 Bing searches a month (all of them)

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).

How do you spell windy?

Windy is spelled W-I-N-D-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 194 of the searches for windy in either form.

windythe right spelling46,410 searches a month
wimdym in place of n240 searches a month

Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.

How common is windy?

Windy appears 3.7 times per million words in written English, the 13,496th most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Windy, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce windy?

  • /ˈwɪn.di/

As an adjective (“Having many bends; winding, twisting or tortuous”): /ˈwaɪndi/.

Windy has 2 syllables, split win·dy in writing.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-windy.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-windy_(ai).wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of windy

  • windier comparative
  • windiest superlative
  • windies plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does windy mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

adjective

  1. 1

    Accompanied by wind.

    It was a long and windy night.

  2. 2

    Unsheltered and open to the wind.

    They shagged in a windy bus shelter.

  3. 3

    Empty and lacking substance.

    They made windy promises they would not keep.

  4. 4

    Long-winded; orally verbose.

  5. 5

    informalFlatulent.

    The Tex-Mex meal had made them somewhat windy.

  6. 6

    slangNervous, frightened.

  7. 7

    Having many bends; winding, twisting or tortuous.

noun

  1. 1

    colloquialA fart.

  2. 2

    IrelandA window.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Windy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchventeux (accompanied by wind), venté (unsheltered and open to the wind), vain (empty and lacking substance)
Germanwindig (accompanied by wind)
Portugueseventoso (accompanied by wind)
Spanishventoso (accompanied by wind), vano (empty and lacking substance), flatulento (flatulent), serpenteante (having many bends)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does windy come from?

From Middle English windy, from Old English windiġ (“windy”), from Proto-Germanic *windigaz (“windy”), equivalent to wind + -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian wiendich (“windy”), West Frisian winich (“windy”), Dutch winderig (“windy”), German Low German windig (“windy”), German windig (“windy”), Swedish vindig (“windy”), Icelandic vindugur (“windy”). The “frightened” sense probably derives from the phrase have the wind up.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after windy