Meanings
- not comparableOf or relating to a cumulus cloud.
Far off on the horizon the cumulous clouds lay with level under-ridges, their upper outlines softly heaped in pearly lights and shades of dun and gray.
1899, Lily Dougall, The Mormon Prophet3 more examples
On the two albums he's made with his Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, Toward the Margins and the new Drawn Inward (both just released, strangely, on ECM), Parker, Guy, Lytton, and violinist Phil Wachsmann improvise cumulous swirls of sound that get processed by electronicists Lawrence Casserley, Walter Prati, and Marco Vecchi and then folded back into the din--yet the saxist's grainy, concentrated melodic tendrils and patiently etched arcs are immediately recognizable.
2000 April 7, Peter Margasak, “Evan Parker & Ned Rothenberg”, in Chicago ReaderThe opportunity offered in the film-like cirrus clouds, which so frequently lie as the background to the more positive forms of the cumulous, for securing the oppositional feeling, is one frequently adopted by sky painters.
1903, Henry Rankin Poore, Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of PicturesAlong its eastern margin rises the mighty Sierra, miles in height, reposing like a smooth, cumulous cloud in the sunny sky, and so gloriously colored, and so luminous, it seems to be not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city.
1894, John Muir, The Mountains of CaliforniaSynonyms: cumular
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveOf or relating to a cumulus cloud.
More synonyms by meaning
adjectiveof or related to cumulous clouds
adjectivethrown together in a pile
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Cite this entry
cumulous. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cumulous
“cumulous.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cumulous. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cumulous,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cumulous.
Source: cumulous on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.