A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
sunbreak
A sunbreak is a short interval of sunshine in an otherwise overcast day, the moment the cloud thins or parts and the light comes through. It is a Pacific Northwest term, used in forecasts in Oregon and Washington, where the winter is a long overcast and a sunbreak is a genuine event worth naming.
Etymology
The word is a plain compound and it is regional American. Forecasters in Seattle and Portland use it routinely and it is barely known elsewhere, which makes it one of the clearer examples of a place growing a word because it needs one.
Notes
The word is also used in architecture, where a brise-soleil is a sunbreak in the sense of a shading device that blocks light rather than admits it, which is the opposite meaning built from the same two words.