Other forms: tornadoes, tornados
A tornado is a spinning tube of wind that reaches down from a storm cloud and touches the ground. Roofs stripped off, a car pushed across a field, a grey funnel walking over flat country while everyone watches from the porch.
In American English it is also a twister, and tornado alley is the stretch of the central United States where they arrive every spring. The plural goes either way, tornadoes or tornados. Keep it apart from its relatives: a hurricane is enormous, builds over warm ocean and lasts for days, while a tornado is narrow, forms over land and lives for minutes. People stretch the word to a person or a mood — she went through the office like a tornado — and it always means fast, loud and wrecking things.
1nountornadoA violently spinning column of air reaching from a storm cloud to the ground.
“A tornado tore through the town and flattened two streets.”
synonyms: twister, whirlwind
2nounforceA person or force that moves with violent, destructive energy.
“He came home like a tornado, slamming doors and shouting.”
tornado is a violent storm.
Also accepted in games: twister
Sailors brought this one home. English had ternado in the 1550s for a thunderstorm at sea, taken from Spanish tronada, 'thunderstorm', from tronar, 'to thunder', and behind that Latin tonō. Then the r and the o swapped places, pulled around by a second Spanish word, tornar, 'to turn'. The storm that thundered became the storm that spins.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)tenh₂- — to thunder
Latin
tonō — to thunder
Spanish
tronada — thunderstorm
English, today
tornado
Built from
From earlier English ternado, attested since the 1550s as a nautical term for a windy thunderstorm. From Spanish tronada (“thunderstorm”), from tronar (“to thunder”), from Latin tonō (“to thunder”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)tenh₂- (“to thunder”). The o and r were reversed in English () under influence of Spanish tornar (“to twist, to turn”), from Latin tornō (“to turn”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Nature & Weather, A Man Called Ove, Weather & Seasons
First appears in chapter 18 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word