Cyclone

How to spell cyclone

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cyclone

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cyclone mean?

1. nounA large, violent rotating storm with strong winds spiralling around a low-pressure centre.

Cyclone in a sentence

• The coastal town was evacuated before the cyclone made landfall.

• Meteorologists tracked the cyclone as it spun across the warm ocean.

Where does cyclone come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word was coined in 1848 by the British meteorologist Henry Piddington, who built it from the Greek kuklon, meaning 'moving in a circle' or 'whirling around', itself derived from kuklos, the ordinary Greek word for a circle or wheel. Piddington wanted a single term for the great rotating storms of the Indian seas, and the circling motion of the wind gave him his image. The same kuklos root sits inside familiar relatives such as 'cycle', 'bicycle', and 'encyclopedia', so the silent-looking spelling of the first syllable, the soft c followed by a y, is the family signature. English adopted the word quickly because tropical storms badly needed a name, and the spelling has stayed close to its Greek-flavoured coinage ever since. The trap for writers is that opening 'cy', since the sound suggests 'si', and the unstressed final syllable, which is the same '-one' as in 'cyclone' rather than 'own'.

How the word is built

• cyclo- (from Greek kuklos: circle, wheel)
• -one (noun ending)