English · Chapter 21 · Lesson 21 · Themed review
Weather and seasons
What the sky is doing, and what time of year it is doing it in.
Practise this lesson
19-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
English has a whole tense just for what is happening right now
This is the pattern English uses more than almost any other language, and the weather shows it clearly.
rains means it happens generally. It is true about the place, not about right now.
- It rains a lot in Britain.
raining means it is happening at this moment. Look out of the window and you can see it.
- Take a coat. It raining.
Both are correct. They answer different questions. The first describes the climate; the second describes today.
Many languages use one form for both. English keeps them separate, and using the wrong one is not a small error - it changes the meaning of the sentence.
Weather words that are verbs
and are both verbs and nouns.
- It is raining. (verb)
- The rain is heavy. (noun)
, and are nouns only. You cannot say it is winding. You say "it is windy", using the adjective.
The -y ending builds most weather adjectives: windy, cloudy, sunny, rainy, snowy, stormy, foggy. That is a useful pattern and it works nearly every time.
The seasons take in
- spring, summer, autumn, winter
You can add the and it is still correct: in the summer. Both are normal.
Autumn is British. Americans say . Both are understood everywhere.
wet and dry
and describe things and weather. "A wet day", "a dry summer."
Wet has a second meaning about a person: someone weak or without character. This is British, informal and unkind, and you will meet it in books before you meet it in conversation.