mackerel sky

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noun

an extensive group of cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds, especially when well-marked in their arrangement: so called because of a resemblance to the scales on a mackerel.

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Origin of mackerel sky

First recorded in 1660–70

Words nearby mackerel sky

Mackenzie Mountains, mackerel, mackerel breeze, mackerel gull, mackerel shark, mackerel sky, Mackerras, Mackinac, Mackinac Bridge, mackinaw, Mackinaw blanket

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use mackerel sky in a sentence

The old proverb, “Mackerel sky, soon wet or soon dry,” expresses this uncertainty.
Reading the Weather|Thomas Morris Longstreth
Another form that the cirro stratus may assume is the mackerel sky,—clouds with the light and shade of the scales of a fish.
Reading the Weather|Thomas Morris Longstreth
I have never met with ten persons who applied even the term “mackerel sky” to the same precise form of cirro-stratus.
The Philosophy of the Weather|Thomas Belden Butler
The sky was what is called a mackerel sky--rows and rows of faint down-plumes of cloud, just tinted with the midsummer sunset.
The War of the Worlds|H. G. Wells

They were light cumuli, or cirro-cumuli, shifting into a brightly shining mackerel sky.
Farthest North|Fridtjof Nansen

British Dictionary definitions for mackerel sky

mackerel sky

noun

a sky patterned with cirrocumulus or small altocumulus clouds

Word Origin for mackerel sky

from the similarity to the pattern on a mackerel's back

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012