catuffa

Afar

Etymology

Onomatopoeic for the sound of an earthquake. Created around the 1950s in Djibouti, used originally to express the decimal numbers in the Richter magnitude scale.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ħatufˈfa/, [ħʌtʊfˈfʌ]
• Hyphenation: ca‧tuf‧fa

Noun

catuffá f 

1. (mathematics) decimal point

References

• Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015) L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)‎^[1], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis)