Meaning & use
chinook
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountabletechnical
A warm, dry wind that blows down the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and can quickly melt snow.
Grammar: Used in weather reports of western Canada and the northwestern United States.
Patterns
- a chinook wind
- the chinook arrives
A chinook raised the temperature by twenty degrees in an afternoon.
Ranchers welcome the chinook because it melts the snow.
The chinook blew through Calgary overnight.
nouncountable or uncountable
A large Pacific salmon valued as food and for sport fishing, also called king salmon.
Grammar: Plural is often the same as the singular: several chinook.
Patterns
- a chinook salmon
He caught a huge chinook in the river.
Chinook salmon swim upstream to spawn.
We grilled a fillet of chinook for dinner.
Word forms
| plural | chinooks |
|---|
Common combinations
- chinook wind
- A chinook wind melted the snow.
- chinook salmon
- Chinook salmon can weigh over forty pounds.
- a chinook arch
- A chinook arch of cloud appeared in the sky.
- chinook season
- Anglers wait for the chinook season.
- warm chinook
- A warm chinook came down from the mountains.
Synonyms and how they differ
- foehn
- Foehn is the general scientific name for warm dry downslope winds, such as those in the Alps, while chinook is the North American name.
- king salmon
- King salmon is the common name for the fish and means the same as chinook.
- warm wind
- Warm wind is a plain description and lacks the idea of a mountain downslope wind.
Word family
- Chinook proper noun
- a Native American people of the Pacific Northwest
Commonly confused: chinook or Chinook helicopter?
chinook vs Chinook helicopter
The Chinook is a large twin-rotor helicopter named after the same word and is not a wind or a fish.
Practice
A sudden warm, dry wind melted the snow on the prairies. Meteorologists call this wind a ___.
Choose one answer.
A chinook is a warm downslope wind from the Rockies. A blizzard is a snowstorm, so it would add snow instead of melting it.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “chinook”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.