Tornadoes

How to spell tornadoes

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tornadoes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tornadoes mean?

1. nounMore than one tornado; violently rotating columns of wind extending from a storm cloud to the ground.

Tornadoes in a sentence

• The spring season brings frequent tornadoes to the central plains.

• Forecasters warned that several tornadoes could form before nightfall.

Where does tornadoes come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word came into English in the 1500s from Spanish, where tronada meant 'a thunderstorm', a noun built on tronar 'to thunder', which traces back to the Latin tonare with the same meaning. English sailors and writers reshaped the word under the influence of the Spanish verb tornar 'to turn', because the storms they described seemed to twist and spin, and that confusion fixed the modern spelling with the inner -nado- rather than the original -nada-. By the 1600s the spelling and sense had settled on the rotating funnel of wind we recognise today. The plural is formed by adding -es, following the pattern of many words that end in -o after a consonant, such as potatoes and heroes; that -oes ending is exactly where writers hesitate, unsure whether to add -s or -es. The lingering memory of the Latin tonare also survives in the words 'detonate' and 'astonish', both rooted in the idea of thunder.

How the word is built

• tornado (from Spanish, a violent windstorm)
• -es (plural suffix)