Talk:windy

Win-dy vs. Wine-dy
I recently ran into a confusion with this word. I've often heard the word "windy", prounced "wine-dy", and used to refer to a curvy road. Presumably it's just a diminuitive of "winding". But I can't think of any alternate way of spelling it to make clear which version of "windy" is implied. Spoken out loud, it's very clear what you mean when you say a "win-dy" road or a "wine-dy" road, but when you type it out, the distinction is lost. While I understand that "wine-dy" is most likely not an actual word, (having searched several online and paper dictionaries) it does seem to be in common enough usage to warrant some sort of mention. Not sure what's this site's policy is on words which are in common usage even if they're technically incorrect or informal. And since in this case, it's a word with two different definitions and pronunciations but no difference in spelling, I'm not sure what the best way of dealing with this would be... --Lurlock 14:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
 * See for instance the several hundred Google hits for "long and windy road" instead of the Beatle's "winding". DAVilla 15:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Huh? this is a known homophone in English. "windy" vs. "windy" was an example in my third-grade English class. Show me a dictionary that *doesn't* have the two meanings of "windy"... The most common homophones, though, I think are -ate words that can be adjectives as well as verbs.

more and most
Are these also acceptable? Colloquial perhaps? DAVilla 15:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Coincidentally, I just wrote the sentence with "...windy mountain roads" and realized that mountain roads can be curvy and also have a lot of wind. I suppose it could then be correct to write that the passage was a windy, windy road. 96.244.248.162 15:07, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I had the same question. When I need to use the word "windy" to mean curving, I use winding to avoid confusion. The winding roads were steep as opposed to the windy roads were steep so you don't wonder if it was windy (too much wind) or windy (meaning curving). Good Luck.

I ended up using winding instead as well since it had a lot of confusion in my paragraph that I had to write. I kept it as winding but triple checked and just about everywhere I looked, it said it didn't matter.