A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1467 entries
brume
Fog or mist, in the literary register — the word you reach for when fog isn’t fancy enough. It carries a suggestion of cold and of winter, and English writers have used it for two centuries mostly for that reason. Kinda like gloaming: When you see it, you know the writer really means it. The adjective is brumous.
Etymology
English took it from French brume, fog, which in Old French meant wintertime, from Latin brūma, winter — and brūma is a worn-down superlative, brevima from brevissima, the shortest, from brevis, short. It’s a cousin of brief, brevity, abbreviate, embrace, and — by a long route through Latin bracchium, the short arm — pretzel.