Earth & SkyGreek → English
Cyclone
/ˈsaɪkloʊn/noun
A storm system whose winds spiral around a centre of low pressure.
The Greek roots
κύκλος
kýklos
circle, wheel
Literally: “the circling thing”
Follow a root:κύκλος14 words
The story of the word
Henry Piddington, a sea captain turned storm investigator in Calcutta, coined the word in 1848 after working through the logs of ships wrecked in the Bay of Bengal. He wanted a name for the whole rotating system rather than the wind at any one point, and said the coil of a snake was in his mind. Whether he built it on κύκλος or on the participle κυκλῶν, moving in a circle, is still argued.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1848
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cyclebicycleencyclopediacyclops
In a sentence
The cyclone crossed the coast overnight and took the roof off the shed.