make the weather

make the weather

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

make the weather (third-person singular simple present makes the weather, present participle making the weather, simple past and past participle made the weather)

1. (chiefly UK, idiomatic) To be extraordinarily effective, especially when in a position of authority.
   • 2008, John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man, →ISBN, page 303:

     And at three o'clock this afternoon: Eureka! He had it in his hand, a flimsy brown file plucked from the catacombs of the public prosecutor's office. It was marked for destruction but by a miracle had escaped the flames. Bachmann had once more made the weather.

   • 2013 April 9, Philip Hensher, "Britain without Margaret Thatcher," Guardian (UK) (retrieved 27 August 2018):

     To try to imagine what the country would have looked like without the dominant politician of the past 60 years is a dizzying exercise. Margaret Thatcher made the weather.

   • 2016, Peter Marsh, "Did Joseph Chamberlain Really ‘Make the Weather’?", in I. Cawood and C. Upton (eds), Joseph Chamberlain, →ISBN, p. 1:

     Winston Churchill recalled Joseph Chamberlain as "incomparably the most live, sparkling, insurgent, compulsive figure in British affairs" at the end of the nineteenth century. He was "the one", said Churchill, "who made the weather".

   • 2018 April 9, Ellen Barry, "Europe: A Drifting UKIP Ousts Leader at Center of Racism Row," New York Times (retrieved 27 August 2018):

     "You cannot get away from the fact that they have made the weather, politically, on two issues, on forcing the referendum and on the question of migration," he said. "They’ve had more of an influence than you would expect from a party that only won one parliamentary election."

See also

• make heavy weather