Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind.

My comments:

Before a rainstorm, we sometimes can feel temperatures dropping because of the wind blowing. Animals are better at this – they can even feel rising levels of moisture in the air.

Humans can do this too but to a lesser degree because we have by and large lost this ability due to our reliance on technology. At least this is the case with most folks in the city.

Anyways, when people or animals feel sudden gusts of the wind and the moisture in the air, they know a rainstorm is imminent.

Hence, figuratively speaking, if something is in the wind, it is coming. It is about to happen. There’s good news in the air, for example. That means something desirable is about to occur. It’s not there yet but you can feel it coming.

In the top example (Something unwanted must clearly be in the wind), though, it is bad news – something unwanted is brewing.

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Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.