Typhoon: Great Wind

Have you ever wondered where the word typhoon originated?

As with hurricane, typhoon has its roots in another language. The word hurricane developed from huracan, a mid-16th century Spanish adaptation of a West Indies word for a tropical cyclone. Over time the spelling morphed and solidified into the modern form.

View large image Typhoon has a few possible language sources, the most likely being the Chinese (Cantonese dialect) daaih fung (大風), which translates as great wind. In fact, traditional Chinese contains a singular word for tropical cyclone: toih (颱), which is pronounced dai in the Mandarin dialect and is often combined with fung in written form as toih fung (颱風).

In either dialect, the sound is similar; early visiting Westerners wrote the words as ty-phoong, and in due course the trailing "g" was dropped. Today typhoon refers only to tropical cyclones in the Northwest Pacific Ocean west of the international dateline, while a super-typhoon is a storm system generating winds equivalent to a force 4-5 major hurricane.

Hong Kong hasn't seen a truly serious typhoon since 1999.

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