etesian

1. not comparablePertaining to a dry north wind which blows in the eastern Mediterranean.

   Is it from those etesian winds, or melting of snow in the mountains under the Equator[…], or from those great dropping perpetual showers[…]?

   1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 2, section 2, member 3

   1 more example

   […] Dixon, assailed without mercy by his Sensorium, almost in a swoon, finds himself, on Nights of Cloud, less and less able to forgo emerging at dusk, cloaked against the Etesian wind, and making directly for the prohibited parts of town.

   1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 77

plural etesians

1. A dry north wind which blows in the eastern Mediterranean.

   [...] I have in England for ſome years paſt, kept by me an exact table, or Ephemeris both of the Vernall, and Summer Eteſians; but found the VVinds no leſſe Variable in thoſe Months, then at other Seaſons.

   1671, R[alph] Bohun, “[Of the Etesian, or Anniversary VVinds: Their Several Species]”, in A Discourse Concerning the Origine and Properties of VVind. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by W. Hall for Tho[mas] Bowman, →OCLC, pages 118–119