get wind of
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To hear or learn about something secretly or indirectly
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
nghe hoặc biết về điều gì đó một cách bí mật hoặc gián tiếp
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: to catch a breeze
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
First it needs to boost its efforts to get wind of military - useful technology at an early stage.
Once they get wind of that they'll have me in there like a shot — And me hands are getting worse.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “get wind of” mean?
To hear or learn about something secretly or indirectly Literally: to catch a breeze
Is “get wind of” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.