typhoon

Etymology
English texts mention, as a Greek word for "whirlwind" since at least the 1550s, referring to 🇨🇬,  (the latter attested since Aeschylus),. (French is said to be attested since 1504. )

However, the first use of it as an English word for a whirlwind or storm dates to 1588, in the spelling Touffon, in the specific sense "giant storm in the Pacific"; this sense first appears in Europe in the mid 16th century in (attested since at least 1560), whence it entered English. Portuguese sailors likely got the word from (compare 🇨🇬, 🇨🇬),  and some spellings of the English word (like ) seem to derive from that Arabic word.

The Arabic word's origin is sometimes thought to be  ("big wind", 🇨🇬 dàfēng, 🇨🇬 daai6 fung1, 🇨🇬 thai-fûng ), and some English forms like  are from or were modified based on Chinese. However, the Arabic word may be entirely Semitic from the native root in the sense of the wind circling around, or it might derive from Greek. (Some sources even suggest the term originated in Greek and travelled via Arabic to Chinese before making its way back into Arabic and back to Europe. ) Over time, the spelling of the word in English was influenced by the Greek word.

Noun

 * 1) A weather phenomenon in the northwestern Pacific that is precisely equivalent to a hurricane, which results in wind speeds of 64 knots (118 km/h) or above. Equivalent to a cyclone in the Indian Ocean and Indonesia/Australia.

Alternative forms

 * touffon ; tuffon and tufon ; typhon; tuffoon; tiffoon; tifoon, tyfoon
 * tufan, toofan, touffan
 * tyfoong (ty-foong), tyfung (ty-fung)

Translations

 * Afrikaans:
 * Ainu:
 * Albanian: taifun
 * Amis: faliyos
 * Arabic: تَايْفُون, إِعْصَار,
 * Armenian:
 * Azerbaijani: tayfun,
 * Basque: tifoi
 * Belarusian: тайфу́н
 * Bengali: ,
 * Bikol Central:
 * Bulgarian:
 * Bunun: balivus
 * Burmese:
 * Catalan: tifó
 * Chinese:
 * Cantonese: 颱風
 * Eastern Min: 風颱
 * Hakka: 颱風, 風搓
 * Hokkien:
 * Mandarin:
 * Wu: 颱風
 * Czech:
 * Danish: taifun,
 * Dutch: ,
 * Esperanto: tajfuno
 * Estonian: taifuun
 * Finnish:
 * French:
 * Georgian: ტაიფუნი
 * German:
 * Greek:
 * Hebrew: טיפון
 * Hindi:, तूफ़ान,
 * Hungarian:
 * Icelandic:
 * Ido:
 * Indonesian: ,
 * Irish: tíofún
 * Italian:
 * Japanese: ,
 * Kanakanabu: sooraru
 * Kankanaey: pewek
 * Kannada:
 * Kavalan: banged
 * Kazakh: тайфун,
 * Arabic:
 * Khmer: ទីហ្វុង
 * Korean:
 * Kyrgyz: тайфун
 * Lao: ພາຍຸໄຕ້ຝຸ່ນ, ໄຕ້ຝຸ່ນ
 * Latin: typhonas
 * Latvian: taifūns
 * Lithuanian: taifūnas
 * Macedonian: тајфун
 * Malay:
 * Malayalam: ,
 * Maori: haumātakataka, huripari
 * Maranao: barat
 * Mongolian: хар салхи
 * Norwegian: taifun, tyfon
 * Paiwan: raljiz
 * Persian:
 * Polish:
 * Portuguese:
 * Puyuma: bariwan
 * Romanian:
 * Rukai: valrigi
 * Russian:
 * Saaroa: pariavaratʉ
 * Saisiyat: ba꞉yoS
 * Sakizaya: baliyus
 * Serbo-Croatian:
 * Cyrillic: тајфун
 * Roman:
 * Sinhalese: ටයිෆූන්
 * Slovak: tajfun
 * Slovene: tajfun
 * Spanish:
 * Swahili: taifuni
 * Swedish:
 * Tagalog:
 * Tajik:
 * Tamil:
 * Taroko: bgihur paru, bohu , sbgihur paru
 * Tausug: hunus
 * Telugu:
 * Thai:
 * Thao: shiraus
 * Tibetan: མཚོ་རླུང
 * Tok Pisin:
 * Tsou: cmoehu
 * Turkish:
 * Turkmen: taýfun
 * Ukrainian: тайфу́н
 * Urdu: طوفان
 * Uyghur: سەھنە ئىستىلى
 * Uzbek:
 * Vietnamese:
 * Welsh: teiffŵn
 * Yami: angin, kakawan
 * Yiddish: טײַפֿון
 * Zhuang: rumzhwx

Verb

 * 1)  To swirl like a hurricane.