The Etymology of Weather Trivia Quiz

Answer: monsoon

Not surprisingly, the word "monsoon" for a seasonal reversing wind (or, more accurately, weather pattern) generally associated with the tropical regions of Asia is believed to have its origin in the Arabic "mawsim", meaning "season", "time of year". This Arabic word in turn comes from "wasama", meaning "marked", referring to any yearly event.

In the early 16th century, Portuguese sailors in the Indian Ocean picked up the Arabic word - which became "monção" - and adopted it to denote the season that was most favourable for voyages to the East Indies. A few decades later, the word was adopted into English: according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known use of "monsoon" dates from 1584.

Answer: blizzard

Unlike the other words mentioned in this quiz, "blizzard" is quite likely to have English roots, though its origin is still debated. The word became common in American English after the extremely harsh winter of 1880-1881 in the northern and central US. According to the OED, the word may be onomatopoeic, and related to words such as "blow", "blast", and "bluster": indeed, its original meaning (dating from the late 1820s) was "violent blow", "blast from a gun", or even "blast of words". In the latter meaning, the word is recorded once or twice in the writings of famed frontiersman Davy Crockett. Some other sources report that the earliest use of "blizzard" in the current meaning occurred in a Iowa newspaper in 1870.

Another possible derivation is the word "blizz", attested in the 1770s, with the meaning of "violent rainstorm". Some have also suggested a relation between "blizzard" and the German word "Blitz" ("lightning"), which, however, seems rather unlikely.

Answer: hurricane

The Taino were the native inhabitants of Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico before the arrival of the Europeans. They worshiped nature spirits called "zemi": one of them - the deity of chaos and disorder, associated with the violent storms regularly occurring in that tropical region - was named Jurakán, which in Spanish became "huracán". According to another theory, the word comes from Hunraqan, the Mayan creator god of wind and fire; this name, however, is likely to have also derived from the Taino word.

One of the earliest appearances of "hurricane" in written English occurs in William Shakespeare's "King Lear" (ca. 1606), when the king rages against the elements, and commands "You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/Till you have drenched our steeples" (Act 3, Scene 2).

Answer: sirocco

Sirocco is a southeastern, sand-laden wind that blows from the Sahara Desert, most commonly during the summer, creating hot, oppressive conditions. The original name for it comes from the Arabic "sharqiyya", meaning "eastern" ("sharq" being the Arabic for "east"). Most of the names given to this wind in the Mediterranean region are variants of "sirocco" - such as the Italian "scirocco" or the Occitan "siròc". However, in Libya it is called "qiblyy" ("ghibli" in English, meaning "coming from the Qibla", the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca), while its Egyptian name is "khamsin" (Arabic for "fifty", as the wind is said to last for 50 days). In Croatia, the wind is called "jugo", meaning "southern".

Cars have been named after sirocco (Volkswagen) and ghibli (Maserati), emphasizing the strength and speed of this wind. In some parts of Europe, the sirocco is also associated with negative effects on people's mood: a colloquial Italian word, "sciroccato", means "weirdo".

Answer: avalanche

The etymology of "avalanche" is rather messy, because this word is likely to be a combination of words of different origins - some of them originating in the same Alpine regions where this dangerous weather phenomenon is a frequent occurrence. The first half of the word comes from "avaler", which in Old French meant "go down" ("swallow" in modern French). "À val" means "down in the valley", while "en aval" is "downstream". "Avalanche" was first attested in French in the 17th century, and was probably influenced by the Savoyard "lavantse", as well as the Romansch "avalantze", meaning "descent".

The first occurrence of "avalanche" in English, with the meaning of "a mass of snow or ice suddenly falling downward", dates from the mid-18th century.

Answer: squall

Though the origin of "squall" - first attested in 1699 - is still uncertain, etymologists agree that the word is very likely to be rooted in Old Norse "skvala" ("cry out"), which is also the source of the English word "squeal". In Swedish, a modern language directly derived from Old Norse, "skvala" means "gush" or "pour down", and the noun "skval" means "outpouring".

The original meaning of "squall" as a noun is "cry out violently": the weather-related "squall" - which describes a rather noisy phenomenon - is quite likely to be a special use of the original word, whose earliest attestation in English (as a verb) reportedly dates from the 1630s.

Answer: tornado

The true etymology of "tornado" may come as a surprise to most, as this word for a violently rotating mass of air is widely believed to be a cognate of the English verb "turn". However, according to various trustworthy sources, the word is an alteration by metathesis (inversion of the letters "r" and "o") of the Spanish "tronada", meaning "thunderstorm" or "peal of thunder", subsequently associated by analogy with the verb "tornar" ("twist" or "turn"). The word was first adopted in English by sailors in the mid-16th century, to denote the windy and wild thunderstorms in the tropical Atlantic Ocean; its earliest form was "ternado", probably a misspelling. The meaning of "violent, destructive whirlwind" was adopted later, probably in the 17th century.

A large area of the Central US has been nicknamed "Tornado Alley" due to the frequency with which tornadoes occur there.

Answer: tramontane

The tramontane is a wind that blows in the European part of the Mediterranean region, and corresponds to the north in a wind (or compass) rose. Though the English word was borrowed from the Italian "tramontana", the origin of this word (which has a similar form in French, Spanish, Greek, Slovenian, and Croatian) lies in the Latin "transmontanus", meaning "(located) across/beyond the mountains". The mountains in questions are the Alps, located to the north of Italy and other Mediterranean countries. The word "tramontane" was first used in English in the 1590s in the meaning of "foreign", but later mainly came to denote the northern wind.

Like the sirocco (Q. 5), a wind that blows in the same geographical area, though from a different direction, the tramontane is associated with mental disturbance. As the tramontane is also identified with the North Star, both in Italian and French the expression "to lose the tramontane" ("perdere la tramontana"/"perdre la tramontane") means to be confused or disoriented.

Answer: typhoon

Although the word "typhoon" is associated with tropical cyclones occurring in East and Southeast Asia, its earliest roots are likely found in Greek mythology rather than any Asian language or culture. In Hesiod's "Theogony", Typhon (also spelled "Typhoeus", and probably associated with the word for "whirlwind") was the monstrous offspring of Earth goddess Gaia and primordial deity Tartarus. Described as a fire-breathing giant from whose shoulders grew hundreds of snake heads, Typhon was the father (by Echidna) of well-known monsters such as Cerberus, the Lernaean Hydra, and the Chimera.

The Persian word "tufān" ("storm"), widely considered the source of "typhoon", was probably influenced by the Greek word. It was later borrowed by Arabic and Hindustani, and in English became "touffon" (and variations thereof), whose first appearances in English date from the late 16th century. In Chinese, "tufān" became "tai fung", which is the source of the modern spelling of the English word, adopted in the early 19th century.

Answer: haboob

Haboobs are dust storms that occur in many parts of the world, not just in the Middle East, where their name originated. The word "haboob" comes from the Arabic "habūb", meaning "blasting furiously", in turn derived from the verb "habb" ("blow"). The Arabic term was originally used to denote the dust and sand storms that occur in parts of Sudan, especially the area around the capital, Khartoum. It was first recorded in English in the 1890s. In recent times, "haboob" has been used to describe the massive dust storms occurring in southwestern US states such as Texas and Arizona - not without controversy because of the "foreign" origin of the word.

One of this word's alternative spellings is "hubbub", very likely unrelated to the English word "hubbub" (meaning "noise" or "confusion"), which is believed to be of Irish origin.