weathercock

Meanings

Noun

• A weather vane, sometimes in the form of a cockerel.
• One who veers with every change of current opinion; a fickle, inconstant person.
• A kind of wind pump whose top behaves like a weather vane, moving with the wind direction, but which also has a wheel attached to measure wind speed.

Verb

• To turn upwind because of the difference in water pressure on two sides.
• To veer into the direction of the oncoming (relative) wind.
• To act as a weathercock for.

Origin

• From Middle English wetharcoke, weþercok, wedercoc, wederkok, equivalent to .