Of all the weather terms that can found in nautical logbooks, none are more useful or more difficult to interpret than those used to describe wind force. Francis Beaufort proposed his wind force scheme in 1806, but it was not until 1838 that this was formally adopted by the Royal Navy. Until that time, although officers did not have a formal code, they did have an unofficial vocabulary that had grown and developed over the 18th century. This was passed down through the generations of captains, masters and lieutenants.

The Dutch, French and Spanish wind force vocabularies similarly underwent developments at this time, but along rather different paths. The French and Spanish terms were simple, but often lyrical developments of everyday language, while the Dutch vocabulary relied heavily of descriptions of the sails that vessels could carry when exposed to winds of different strengths.

Before the huge scientific potential of the store of wind force data held in the thousands of logbooks could be realised, the CLIWOC team had the task of converting the archaic vocabulary of the four partner languages into modern-day Beaufort Force equivalents. Only then could the information be converted into wind speeds and used in modelling and analytical exercises.

The CLIWOC Multilingual Meteorological Dictionary includes also a discussion of the developments of wind force terms in each of the languages (English, Dutch, French and Spanish), as well as a useful bibliography and translation summary.