leeward

What it means

1. On the side sheltered from the wind; in that direction.

   Synonyms: downwind

In a sentence

Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb—one engaged forward and the other aft—the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 23, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Where it comes from

1. Middle Englishlee
2. Englishlee
3. Proto-Indo-European*wert-
4. Proto-Germanic*wardaz
5. Englishleeward

From lee (“side away from the wind”) + -ward (“direction”).