Definition

A hurricane is a violent, tropical, cyclonic storm of the western North Atlantic, having wind speeds of or in excess of 72 mph (32 m/sec). Hurricanes can damage crops and plants by uprooting and toppling them and by defoliation.

Etymology. Hurricane: 1555, a partially deformed adoptation from Sp. huracan (Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés, "Historia General y Natural de las Indias," 1547-9), furacan (in the works of Pedro Mártir De Anghiera, chaplain to the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and historian of Spanish explorations), from an Arawakan (W. Indies) word. In Port., it became furacão. Confusion of initial h- and f- common in Sp. in these years; the conquistador is known in contemporary records as both Hernando and Fernando Cortés. First in Eng. in Richard Eden's "Decades of the New World": "These tempestes of the ayer (which the Grecians caule Tiphones...) they caule furacanes." OED records some 39 different spellings, mostly from the late 16c., including forcane, herrycano, harrycain, hurlecane. Modern form became frequent from 1650, established after 1688. Shakespeare uses hurricano ("King Lear," "Troilus and Cressida"), but in reference to waterspouts.Typhoon: the modern word represents a coincidence and convergence of at least two unrelated words of similar sound and sense. Tiphon "violent storm, whirlwind, tornado" is recorded from 1555, from Gk. typhon "whirlwind," personified as a giant, father of the winds, perhaps from typhein "to smoke." The meaning "cyclone, violent hurricane of India or the China Seas" (1588) is first recorded in T. Hickock's translation of an account in Italian of a voyage to the East Indies by Cæsar Frederick, a merchant of Venice, probably borrowed from, or infl. by, Chinese (Cantonese) tai fung "a great wind," from tu "big" + feng "wind;" name given to violent cyclonic storms in the China seas. A third possibility is tufan, a word in Arabic, Persian and Hindi meaning "big cyclonic storm" (and the source of Port. tufao), which may be from Gk. typhon but commonly is said to be a noun of action from Arabic tafa "to turn round."