cyclone

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English

Cyclone Kyarr over the Arabian Sea
Cyclone Fantala over the southwest Indian Ocean near Madagascar
The emoji for cyclone. There's an entry at 🌀

Etymology

Coined by Henry Piddington, probably in the 1840s, and based on some term in Ancient Greek. Sources disagree on the date and on which Ancient Greek term, though it had to be something derived from either κύκλος (kúklos, “circle, wheel”) or κυκλόω (kuklóō, “go around in a circle, form a circle, encircle”), for example the present active participle κυκλῶν (kuklôn). See cycle and wheel.

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -aɪkloʊn

Noun

cyclone (plural cyclones)

  1. (broad sense) A weather phenomenon consisting of a system of winds rotating around a center of low atmospheric pressure
  2. (narrow sense) Such weather phenomenon occurring in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean
  3. A low pressure system.
  4. (informal) The more or less violent, small-scale circulations such as tornadoes, waterspouts, and dust devils.
  5. A strong wind.
  6. A cyclone separator; the cylindrical vortex tube within such a separator

Quotations

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

cyclone (third-person singular simple present cyclones, present participle cycloning, simple past and past participle cycloned)

  1. This term needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.
    • 1997, D. J. H. Jones, Murder in the New Age
      White dust was cycloning at the bottom of ravines that cut for miles into the red flatness
    • 2015, Robert J. Morgan, Mastering Life Before It's Too Late
      Now, all of a sudden, I had to juggle class schedules with study time and assignment deadlines and work hours. It quickly cycloned into a sort of frantic agitation with all-nighters, near misses, and frenzied nerves.

See also

French

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κυκλῶν (kuklôn), present active participle of κυκλόω (kuklóō, “I encircle”), from κύκλος (kúklos, “circle”).

Pronunciation

Noun

cyclone m (plural cyclones)

  1. cyclone (rotating system of winds)

Further reading

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