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a. the coldest season of the year, between autumn and spring, astronomically from the December solstice to the March equinox in the N hemisphere and at the opposite time of year in the S hemisphere
b. (as modifier): winter pasture
2. the period of cold weather associated with the winter

What does it mean when you dream about winter?

A winter dreamscape could indicate the dreamer’s favorite time of the year for fun and frolic. However, winter is also a season in which many people experience depression. This dream could indicate an emotional withdrawal from a personal relationship or a withdrawing of one’s emotional investment in the workplace.


The period from the winter solstice, about December 22, to the vernal equinox, about March 21; popularly and for most meteorological purposes, winter is taken to include December, January, and February in the Northern Hemisphere, and June, July, and August in the Southern Hemisphere.

first point of Capricornus

first point of Capricornusclick for a larger image
That point on the ecliptic occupied by the sun at the maximum southerly declination. Sometimes called the December solstice, the first point of Capricornus. The same as the winter solstice, the first point of Libra. The point of the intersection of the ecliptic and the celestial equator (equinoctial). When the sun is moving from the north to the south direction. It is denoted by the symbol image. Also called the winter, or December, equinox.

Maidyarem (Maidhyairya; Mid-Year or Winter Feast)

December-January, May, June; 16th-20th days of Dae, the 10th Zoroastrian month
Maidyarem is the fifth of the six great seasonal feasts, known as gahambars, of the Zoroastrian religion. It was traditionally celebrated at a point in the agricultural year when, due to extreme cold, all work came to a halt. The name comes from the word airya, which means "rest."
The six gahambars were typically joyous festivals that included such activities as special rituals and prayers, and the sharing of food. Although they lasted five days, the fifth day was the only one spent in actual celebration; the other four were for preparation and anticipation of the day's feasting, when families or neighborhoods would get together. These seasonal feasts were designed to give those who worked from dawn to dusk on farms a respite from their labors. Today, with so many Zoroastrians living in urban areas, the importance of the gahambars has diminished.
The Zoroastrian calendar has 12 months of 30 days each, plus five extra days at the end of the year. Because of discrepancies in the calendars used by widely separated Zoroastrian communities around the world, there are now three different calendars in use, and Maidyarem can fall either in December-January, May, or June according to the Gregorian calendar.
There are only about 100,000 followers of Zoroastrianism today, and most of them live in northwestern India or Iran. Smaller communities exist in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Canada, the U.S., England, and Australia.
RelHolCal-2004, p. 69


the north wind; associated with winter. [Rom. Myth.: Hall, 130]
pictorial emblem in Buddhist tradition. [Animal Symbol-ism: Jobes, 378]
Ded Moroz
personification of winter; “Grandfather Frost.” [Russ. Folklore: Misc.]
zodiacally belongs to December; hence, winter. [Astrology: Hall, 139]
personification; portrayed as old and decrepit. [Rom. Myth.: LLEI, I: 322]
Jack Frost
personification of winter. [Pop. Culture: Misc.]
Old Man Winter
personification of winter. [Pop. Culture: Misc.]
old man wrapped in cloak
personification of winter. [Art: Hall, 130]
the period of her stay (winter) with Hades. [Gk. Myth.: Espy, 28]
References in classic literature ?
But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing.
He was submerged in his hat and coat; he looked singularly small, and frail, and miserable, as he slowly wended his way, in the wintry sunlight, down the garden walk.
But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks'-nests drifted away upon the wind.
Certain wintry branches of candles on the high chimneypiece faintly lighted the chamber: or, it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness.
And one wintry morning in 1878 Queen Victoria drove to the house of Sir Thomas Biddulph, in London, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to Kate Field, who sat in a Downing Street office.
The keen frosty air; the low, rosy, wintry sun; the castle, hailing him like an old acquaintance; the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of friends whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in the streets; the pleasant chant of the north-country accent; the dome of St.
I saw a richer green flow up the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission.
Dreary gardens lay around, filled with withered flowers and bare, drooping trees; while heavy clouds hung low in the dark sky, and a cold wind murmured sadly through the wintry air.
And sometimes, when the wind struck the hill at a certain angle, and swept down by the cottage across the wintry plain, its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived; it came as if the Past were speaking, as if the Dead had contributed each a whisper, as if the Desolation of Ages were breathed in that one lamenting sound.
Impelled by such thoughts as these, he sat writing in the great chair when the pleasant summer breeze came in through his open casement; and also when the fire of forest logs sent up its blaze and smoke, through the broad stone chimney, into the wintry air.
It is a mere skeleton of slender, decaying tree trunks, with neither walls nor a roof; nothing but a tracery of branches and twigs, which the next wintry blast will be very likely to scatter in fragments along the terrace.
In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages beset his path; in vain may rocks and precipices and wintry torrents oppose his progress; let but a single track of a beaver meet his eye, and he forgets all dangers and defies all difficulties.