ventus

Ventus, venti, m., second declension, and mercifully regular. In manuscripts u and v are one letter, so uentus and ventus are the same word and the corpus shows both; do not read uentus as a separate lemma.

The Romans named the winds rather than the compass points, and the names do double duty as directions: Aquilo or Boreas from the north, Auster from the south, Favonius or Zephyrus the mild west wind of spring, Eurus from the east. A ventus secundus is a following wind, literally one that "goes along with" you, which is how secundus came to mean favourable in every other context too. Ventis dare vela is to set sail. English gets ventilate and, through French, vent.