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# headwinds

«headwinds» in Mova's school dictionary: **wind blowing towards you as you move, which slows you down** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 2 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

noun (headwind, headwinds; plural usual in the figurative sense)

### meaning for a pupil

1) (literal) wind blowing towards you as you move, which slows you down. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#m1)

2) (euphemism, business and economics) problems or difficulties that slow growth or hurt sales: «the company faced headwinds». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

Business and financial jargon, borrowed from flying and sailing, used to blame outside forces for weak results without admitting mistakes; official, all regions. The literal sense is used in sport, flying and science.

### examples

- Our plane was late because of strong headwinds. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x1)
- The cyclists struggled against the headwind. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x2)
- The company blamed currency headwinds for weak results. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x3)
- The economy faces headwinds from high prices. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x4)
- Running into a headwind makes the race harder. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x5)
- "Headwinds" is the boss's way of saying sales are down. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x6)
- The opposite of a headwind is a tailwind, which helps you. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x7)
- A plane flying into a 50 km/h headwind at 800 km/h moves over the ground at 750 km/h. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/#x8)

### note

Trap: in business it means problems, often an excuse. In science, a headwind reduces ground speed: subtract the wind speed; a tailwind adds it. Plain words: problems, difficulties.

### In the corpora

- ["Headwinds" in business means problems that hurt sales.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/23-fees-bugs-and-spin/16/)
- ["Headwinds" in business means problems that hurt sales.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/42-olympiad-reading-between-the-lines/13/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «headwinds» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/H/headwinds/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.