A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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zephyrus
Zephyrus is the Greek name for the west wind, one of the four principal winds alongside Boreas from the north, Notus from the south, and Eurus from the east. In Greek and Roman writing he is the gentlest of the four, the wind of spring that melts the snow and brings the growing season, and he was said to live in a cave in Thrace.
Etymology
It gave English the ordinary word zephyr, which means any soft breeze. That’s a significant downgrade: In Homer, Zephyrus is a violent and stormy wind, and the gentle version is a later Roman development that English inherited and kept.
Notes
The Tower of the Winds in Athens, built in the first century BC, carries a relief of each of the eight winds on the face pointing the way it blows from, and Zephyrus is shown as a young man carrying flowers in a fold of his cloak. The site’s eurus, notus, and boreas entries are the other three of the four.