A WEATHERCOCK as we all know, is a decorative device intended to tell the direction of the wind. For obvious reasons, however, the word is often used figuratively to describe a person who is fickle as for example in Geoffrey Chaucer's plaintive cri de coeur to his own inconstant donna mobile.
There is no faith that may your heart embrace:
But, as a weathercock that turns his face
With every wind, you change.
This is just one example of how the word `weather' has been borrowed, and its implicit volatility used in metaphor to convey a host of different meanings. There are many others.
"Fair weather friends," for instance, might well be described as weathercocks. They are those who stick close by when times are good, but are nowhere to be seen when fortunes change. To "make fair weather", on the other hand, is to flatter, to conciliate, or make the best of things as when Shakespeare's Duke of York remarks:
But I must make fair weather yet awhile,
Till Henry be more weak, and I more strong.
To "get the weather gage" is nautical in origin, and means to get the upper hand. In the days of sail, a fighting ship that had the weather gage of the enemy was on the windward side of the opposing vessel, and therefore had a tactical advantage. And to "keep the weather of" means something similar - to get around, successfully persuade, or overcome. Shakespeare uses the phrase in Troilris and Cressida, when he has Cassandra try to dissuade the illfated Hector from going into battle, but to no avail:
Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate;
Life every man holds dear;
but the dear man
Holds honour far more pre cious dear then life.
"Heavy weather," of course, is familiar to us all from time to time: we "make" it when we seem to find a simple task unnecessarily hard. The reason, of course, may be that we are "under the weather" unwell or out of sorts, often perhaps because we have indulged too much the night before. And even "Weather Eye" has a place in this elemental terminology: "to have one's weather eye open" is to observe the weather very closely, and by implication, to look out for squalls - in other words, to have one's wits about one. Thus semel emissum, as Horace used to say, volat irrevocabile verbum. "Once sent out, a word takes wing and cannot he recalled."