Buluturan

Buluturan is a term encountered in Filipino-language contexts to denote the state or quality of cloudiness or cloud cover in the sky. The word is built from bulut, meaning cloud, with the suffix -uran, which in Tagalog typically forms abstract nouns that express conditions or states. Thus buluturan can be understood as “the cloudy condition” or “the presence of clouds.”

In meteorology, buluturan may be used to describe extensive cloud cover, the progression of cloud formations, or the overall texture of the sky during a weather system. In practice, it often appears in descriptive or poetic weather writing where the emphasis is on atmosphere and mood rather than precise scientific measurement. In literature, the term functions metaphorically as well, signaling uncertainty, transformation, or the ephemeral nature of moments, much as clouds shift and dissolve.

The term is not uniformly standardized across major dictionaries and can appear primarily in regional, literary, or informal Filipino usage. Its frequency varies by corpus and speaker, and it may be preferred in contexts that favor evocative cloud imagery over technical terminology. Because buluturan sits at the intersection of meteorology and poetry, its meaning can be context-dependent, ranging from a straightforward reference to sky conditions to a symbolic device for depicting changeable states.

See also: cloud, cloud cover, Tagalog language, Filipino literature.