Etymology

winds of change

Today it means: The inexorable process of inevitable societal and political change and progress over time. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

Coined by UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1960 in a speech advocating decolonization made in Cape Town, South Africa, which referred to the "wind of change […] blowing through this continent", later shifting to the plural "winds of change" in popular usage.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.