tsunami

Etymology

It is borrowed from Japanese 津波 (tsunami),^{[2][3][4][5][1]} from 津 (tsu, “harbour, port”) and 波 (nami, “wave, waves”).^{[2][3][6][5][1]} The OED and Dictionary.com note the older romanization “tunami”.^[2][7] The American Heritage Dictionary explains the name by the waves passing almost unnoticed on the open sea and rising to do damage in the shallow water of harbours,^[6] while Ayto relates it to the devastation such waves have caused in Japanese coastal communities.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A huge sea wave that floods the land: 1896, in the Marion (Iowa) Pilot,^[2] with reference to the wave that struck Japan on 15 June of that year.^[3]

Semantic evolution

For most of the 20th century the word belonged mainly to the vocabulary of oceanographers and earth scientists, and lay people said tidal wave.^[8] Merriam-Webster dates its first use to 1897, Barnhart to 1904 and Dictionary.com to 1905–10.^[5][4][7] Figurative uses, a huge and overwhelming quantity of something, appear in American magazines by the early 1990s ("A Tsunami of Red Ink Sweeps Across Japan", 1991).^[9][10] The disastrous flooding of the coasts of southern Asia at the end of 2004 made it a word of everyday English.^[8]

Timeline

• 1896 – a destructive sea wave, of the Japanese wave of 15 June.^[2][3]
• 1897 – first known use according to Merriam-Webster.^[5]
• 1904 – first record according to Barnhart.^[4]
• 1991 – figurative, a tsunami of red ink.^[9]
• 2004 – enters everyday use after the Indian Ocean flooding.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A very large and often destructive sea wave, or series of waves, caused by an earthquake, landslide or volcanic eruption under the sea.^{[10][5][2][11]}
2. A sudden, overwhelming quantity of something: a tsunami of complaints.^[10][9]

Word family

• tsunamic

Related words

• tidal wave

Usage notes

Collins notes that a tsunami is sometimes wrongly called a tidal wave;^[10] strictly, a tidal wave is caused by the tide, while a tsunami is set off by an undersea earthquake.^[8] The plural is tsunamis, or tsunami unchanged.^[5][10][11]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b c Evans, Tom (1997), A Dictionary of Japanese Loanwords, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press
10. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press