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Gust Beyond Wind
You're no doubt familiar with the simple gust that means "a brief burst of wind." At least a century and a half before that word first appeared in print in the late 16th century, however, a differently derived homograph came on the scene. The windy gust is probably derived from an Old Norse word gustr, whereas our older featured word (which is now considerably rarer than its look-alike) comes to us through Middle English from gustus, the Latin word for "taste." Gustus gave English another word as well. Gusto (which now usually means "zest" but can also mean "an individual or specific taste") comes to us from gustus by way of Italian.
Synonyms
Examples of gust in a Sentence
Mary Gilbert, CNN, 15 Aug. 2024
Wind gusts ranged between 40 to 60 mph across portions of the Delmarva up through eastern Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey.
—Nadine El-Bawab, ABC News, 10 Aug. 2024
South winds with speeds between 15 to 20 mph and gusts of up to 40 mph are expected in the area, which includes Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Westchester counties in New York.
—Muri Assunção, New York Daily News, 9 Aug. 2024
There’s a sense of quarantining this baffling political weirdness away from the rest of the country, not in anything so crazy as a physical structure—no need for that—but simply in a word, a gust of air, some sound attached.
—Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2024
See all Example Sentences for gust 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gust.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Cite this Entry
“Gust.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gust. Accessed 18 Sep. 2024.
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