Windward means on the side the wind is coming from. The windward rail, sail to windward, the windward shore.
It is the opposite of leeward, and the pair matters at sea: sailing to windward is the hard direction and no boat goes straight into the wind. On land, the windward side of a hill gets the rain and the leeward side stays dry.
1adjectivewindwardOn the side the wind is coming from.
“The sailors hung on to the windward rail as the boat leaned over in the gusts.”
windward is a position.
Middle English
wynd
English
wind
English, today
windward
Built from
From wind + -ward. wind comes from Middle English wynd. From Middle English wynd,wind, from Old English wind (“wind”), from Proto-West Germanic wind, from Proto-Germanic windaz, from Proto-Indo-European h₂wéh₁n̥tos (“wind”), from earlier h₂wéh₁n̥ts (“wind”), derived from the present participle of h₂weh₁- (“to blow”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA