tornado

Forms

tornado m (plural tornados)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from English tornado, which goes back to the Spanish noun tronada (“thunderstorm”), from tronar (“to thunder”).^[2][3][1] Corominas notes that the English word, recorded in 1556, first meant “storm” and later “hurricane”, and that Spanish has taken it up only recently.^[4][3] Etymonline gives the early form ternado and suggests that the shift of the ⟨r⟩ came from the influence of tornar (“to turn”), and that the ending ⟨-o⟩ made the word look more Spanish.^[5] Wikcionario also speaks of a reinterpretation after that verb.^[6] The verb for “to thunder” is from Latin tonō.^[4]

Before the English origin was recognised, the Academy's 1899 dictionary derived the word from torno, and García de Diego places it in his article on Latin tornare (“to turn on a lathe”).^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Academy's 1884 dictionary has tornado as a noun, “a hurricane in the Gulf of Guinea”.^[9] Echegaray defines it the same way.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In English the word named a small violent thunderstorm in the tropical Atlantic, then from the 1620s a violent whirlwind; by 1849 it was a destructive funnel cloud, especially in the American Midwest.^[5] Spanish took it with the African sense, the storms of the Gulf of Guinea, which Moliner still notes.^[9][11] Today it names any violent whirling wind.^[2][12] A newspaper of Buenos Aires in 1988 speaks of living en zona de tornados.^[13]

Timeline

• 1556 – the English word is recorded, from Spanish tronada.^[3][4]
• 1739 – Autoridades records tronada, the Spanish source.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary records tornado as a hurricane of the Gulf of Guinea.^[9]
• 1899 – the Academy derives it from torno.^[7]
• 1988 – a record from Buenos Aires.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. tornado: a violent rotating column of air, shaped like a funnel, that reaches down from a storm cloud to the ground.^[2][12][6]
2. (dated) A hurricane (huracán), especially one of the storms of the Gulf of Guinea.^[9][11]

Related words

• tronada
• tronar
• English tornado

Usage notes

Tornado is also the past participle of tornar “to return, to turn”, used since the Cantar de mio Cid.^[14][15]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. tornado
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tronar
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 659
5. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Wikcionario (Spanish Wiktionary), es.wiktionary.org
7. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 970
8. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. tornado
9. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 1035
10. ^ Echegaray, Eduardo de (1887–1889), Diccionario general etimológico de la lengua española, 5 vols., Madrid: José María Faquineto, p. 532
11. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. tornado
12. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. tornado
13. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. tornado
14. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. tornado
15. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 6, 303