climate

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
climate/ˈklʌɪmət/

▶noun

• 1 the general weather conditions prevailing in an area over a long period.

• 2 a prevailing trend or public attitude: the current economic climate.

– derivatives
climatic adjective,
climatical adjective,
climatically adverb.

– origin ME (orig. denoting a zone of the earth between two lines of latitude, later a region considered with ref. to its atmospheric conditions): from OFr. climat or late L. clima, climat-, from Gk klima ‘slope, zone’.