Quick quiz! A "hurricane" is so called because...

a. It "hurries" the sugar cane in the West Indies as it blows over it b. Harry Caine, a common seaman with a valuable knot collection, was the first English sailor blown overboard in such a storm c. When Cain killed Abel, God used a strong wind to hurry Cain away from his parents d. The Arawaks who inhabited the West Indies called such a storm a "hurakan," an evil spirit of the sea.

Answer d is correct. Spanish conquistadors adopted "hurakan" from the Arawaks. Its earliest English versions included "furacan," "forcane," "harrycain," "hurlecane" and "hurricano." Neither its meaning nor spelling was fixed until nearly 1700.

In 1611, William Shakespeare used "hurricano" in "Troilus and Cressida" to refer, not to a tropical storm, but to a waterspout: "the dreadful spout which shipmen do the hurricano call." (Rumors that the first actor to play Troilus was the Italian actor Hurricano Colombo are simply not true.)

In 1953, U.S. weather services began naming hurricanes for women; men's names were added in 1978, alternating with women's. But, alas, we'll never see Hurricanes Quentin, Uma, Xavier, Yancey or Zelda because names beginning with Q, U, X, Y or Z are too scarce.

What we call a "hurricane" in the Western Hemisphere is dubbed a "typhoon" west of the international dateline. "Typhoon" is fascinating because it's a blend of a Greek word and a Chinese word, which, though they developed independently, were nearly identical in sound and meaning.

The Greek word for whirlwind or violent storm is "typhon," which the Greeks personified as an immense father of winds. Picture the image TV meteorologists use to illustrate impending gales — a puffy, cloudlike face fiercely bellowing out wind across the map.

"Typhon" was adopted into Arabic as "tufan." The British encountered "tufan" in India and adopted it as "touffon" around 1590.

About a century later, the British sailing near China encountered the Cantonese word for a big wind, "tai fung," that was very similar to the Indian "touffon."

For the Brits, it was like seeing a man in Bombay and then spotting a nearly exact look-alike in Canton. "Seems we've met this chap before," harrumphed the Brits.

Eventually they blended "touffon" and "tai fung" into "typhoon," which first appeared in print in 1771, and typhoons have been pelting East Asia with wind and rain ever since.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Connecticut, invites your language sightings. His book, "Mark My Words," is available for $9.99 on Amazon.com. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via email to info@creators.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM

Photo credit: NASA at Unsplash