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Gust Beyond Wind
You’re no doubt familiar with the breezy gust meaning “a brief burst of wind.” But about a century and a half before that word first appeared in print in the late 16th century, a different gust blew onto the scene. The windy gust likely comes from a synonymous Old Norse word, gustr, whereas the older gust, which refers to the sensation of taste as well as to a feeling of enthusiastic delight, comes ultimately from gustus, the Latin word for “taste.” English speakers eventually mostly dropped that older gust, replacing it in the early 17th century with a similar gustus word borrowed from Italian: gusto is now the go-to word when you want to refer to enthusiastic and vigorous enjoyment or appreciation. You can use it with gusto.
Examples of gust in a Sentence
Ca Wildfire Bot, Sacbee.com, 3 July 2025
West southwest wind 6 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 18 mph.
—Chris Sims, IndyStar, 3 July 2025
Christy Gutowski, Chicago Tribune, 23 June 2025
Wind gusts as high as 75 mph to 99 mph ripped through eastern North Dakota the same day, leaving nearly 23,000 utility customers still without electricity in the two states roughly 48 hours after the storms, according to USA TODAY's outage tracker.
—Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA Today, 23 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for gust
Cite this Entry
“Gust.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gust. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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